Blackburn-based Muir Matheson is one North East exporter with a strongly vested interest in the global exploration drive into increasingly remote oil and gas territories. In fact, notes the company, the more remote the better!
In recent years, Muir Matheson has steadily diversified out of its traditional supply of airport weather monitoring systems into specialised, multi-site weather and oceanographic data-gathering networks for offshore installations.
Philip Goodall, managing director with Muir Matheson“The worse the weather, the less charted the currents, the more our customers need us,” reports managing director Philip Goodall (right) cheerfully. “Our North Sea growth will remain steady, but we’ll make our real business gains in the future in frontier territories like Sakhalin, Kazakhstan and West Africa.”
Muir Matheson is a classic example of a business building on its original non-oil expertise to develop products and systems with worldwide oil and gas application. Founded in Edinburgh in 1974 by Angus Matheson, a former radar system engineer with Ferranti, the company initially concentrated on public address, radio and telephone systems.
By the early 1980s, however, the company had diversified into the repair of offshore weather station systems, and the business relocated to Aberdeen in 1985.
At the same time, however, it continued to grow its non-oil business by supplying airport weather systems, and steady growth through the 1990s saw Muir Matheson become the outright leader in this specialist field.
“We now service almost every major airport in the UK and Ireland,” notes Philip Goodall. “That means support into over 40 airports, with recent contract awards worth £0.5 million for new systems at Heathrow and Aberdeen.”
But, having achieved this position of domestic market dominance, Muir Matheson could see little prospect of replicating success in the international airport market, which was dominated by large corporations with deep-rooted, long-term relationships.
Breaking into oil and gas
By this time, though, the company had begun to make substantial inroads into the North Sea oil and gas market, initially supplying weather monitoring systems for individual offshore installations before going on to develop sophisticated meteorological data-gathering networks for major operators like Shell.
Muir Matheson’s service portfolio is extensive, and ranges from system design, installation and service through to software development.
Sarah Cross of Muir Matheson“Having proved our network concept in the North Sea, we have grown our overseas business fairly rapidly in recent years, to the point where it now accounts for over 60% of turnover,” notes marketing manager Sarah Cross (right).
“We now have widespread operations in emerging oil territories like Kazakhstan, West Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia and Iran”.
Muir Matheson is happy to acknowledge the importance of the wide-ranging export support services which it has received during this period of impressive growth. Through participating in Scottish Enterprise’s “Marketing Awareness Programme”, Philip Goodall met Business Gateway International Trade Manager Colin Crabbe, who became a familiar figure in the company’s boardroom.
“With his objective external perspective and extensive knowledge of export support resources, Colin played a very valuable role in helping us filter through our wide-ranging business development ideas and prioritise exactly decide what was ‘doable’,” he observes.
Going global
Muir Matheson subsequently went on to implement a process improvement plan and an international marketing plan, the latter playing a key role in defining the shape of the company’s future growth.
“In a buoyant oil and gas market, it’s sometimes too easy just to respond to tenders from around the energy world and go where they take you,” notes Sarah Cross. “The big benefit of having a well-defined marketing plan is that it gives you clear focus, and shows you where you need to apply your resources to attain your stated objectives.”
Probably the most exciting development to emerge from this period has been Muir Matheson’s decision to integrate oceanographic capabilities alongside its established meteorological strengths. The company is currently working with a well-established South African oceanographic company, Metocean Services International (MSI), on a number of integrated projects.
“We have already worked with MSI on projects in Kazakhstan and elsewhere, so we know the integrated meteorological/oceanographic capability is eminently marketable,” says Philip Goodall.
So the forecast for this progressive company seems sunny in the extreme. Thanks to clear-sighted strategic planning and the ability to adapt technologies from one industry sector to another, the Muir Matheson group seems poised to become a recognised world leader in weather and ocean monitoring systems.
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