Despite worldwide market changes, Bredero Shaw is experiencing positive developments and expanding to keep up in the global market.

After more than 75 years of growth in the industry, Bredero Shaw, a division of Toronto-based energy services company ShawCor Ltd., is preparing for even more in the next three to five years. A pipe coatings developer and manufacturer, the Houston-based company offers products with anti-corrosion, flow-assurance, protective and weight coating features to the oil, gas and water industries worldwide.

“We are making investments right now to make sure we can handle all the growth of the next few years,” says Scott James, marketing manager for the Americas. “Our future growth is ideally based on capturing upcoming projects with new product technologies, growing through acquisitions, and growing organically through investing in our plants and new products.”

According to the company, Bredero Shaw's recent growth investments include:
· Camrose, Canada - The company purchased 130 acres of land and installed a double-joint welding facility; invested in a $38 million state-of-the-art coatings facility, a new rail spur and capacity upgrade of the existing plant; and met the growing demands for insulation coatings and large-diameter transmission pipeline projects in the tar sands region.

· Regina, Canada - It installed a high-performance composite coating capability to serve large-diameter projects · Belo Horizonte, Brazil - Bredero Shaw invested in a new, world-class insulation coatings plant and field joint technology, and is currently executing the Petrobras PDEG offshore project.

· Portland, Ore. - It opened a new coatings plant at Oregon Steel Mill's large-diameter pipe manufacturing facility, and is currently preparing to provide pipe coating services for Kinder Morgan's Rockies Express pipeline project.

· Pearland, Texas - The company relocated a glass syntactic polyurethane insulation plant from Mobile, Ala., and completed the subsea Lorien and Tahiti projects in the Gulf of Mexico.

Additionally, Bredero Shaw expanded into Kabil, Indonesia, by building a world-class facility in 2006. It invested in a deepwater port facility and developed a full range of corrosion coating and HeviCote concrete weight coating. The company also invested in the world's largest pipe coatings facility, located in Kuantan, Malaysia, and added a second HeviCote concrete plant and three-layer polyethylene/polypropylene and FBE anti-corrosion coatings, internal SureFlo coatings, flow assurance and custom coatings.

In the Middle East, the company increased its capability to process larger-diameter pipe, and is currently offering anti-corrosion coating and HeviCote on 56-inch diameter pipe in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. In addition, has increased its capacity to process large-diameter gas and water lines and to better service large projects, including the Khurais pipeline in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. In mid-2006, the company acquired Eupec Brasil Ltda. in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which is adjacent to Vallourec and Mannesmann's pipe mill.

Global Representation
Bredero Shaw's tagline, “The Global Leader in Pipe Coating Solutions,” is taken literally. The company's geographic breadth is one of the factors that sets it apart, James notes.

“With our 4,000 employees, we have the ability to pull resources from all over the world,” James says. “It creates a lot of individual experiences and [in turn allows] for a lot of bench strength. We have 27 fixed facilities around the world that allow us to participate in all pipeline projects.”

In addition, Bredero Shaw regularly applies for new patents. It currently has 40 patents on application processes, polymer technology and other solutions. The company's technology capabilities also stand out in the industry, James adds. It has three R&D facilities - Toronto, Calgary and Norway - and employs more than 25 Ph.D.s in chemistry and related fields.

“Almost none of our competitors, especially North American companies, can meet our competitive advantage,” James stresses.

A Solid Company
Contributing to more than 80 percent of its parent company's annual revenues, Bredero Shaw has coated more than 250,000 kilometers of pipelines around the world, it says. Aside from Bredero Shaw, ShawCor serves the pipeline and pipe services industries with its other divisions: Canusa-CPS, Shaw Pipeline Services and Guardian. Its petrochemical and industrial services divisions include DSG-Canusa and Shaw Flex.

But despite world-renowned success, James says, the company stays humble. “This is a very good place to work at,” he notes. “We have a good, young management team and we're a solid company financially. We're conservatively managed so we can survive through challenges without much financial trouble.”