“Take care of the team, they will take care of the customers, and that will take care of business” said Subrato Saha, Co-Founder of AquaChemie when speaking to Business Enquirer.
Subrato and his co-founder Anand Kumar Varadharajulu established AquaChemie, a leader in the chemical manufacturing, sales and services sphere, having gained years of experience at the likes of GE, ExxonMobil, Sabic, and Shell.
Established in 2009, AquaChemie has seen significant growth, particularly between 2020 and 2022 where it saw 45% growth year on year.
Today, the business employs over 200 people, operates three manufacturing units in UAE, KSA, and Qatar, and supports customers across eight countries in the GCC countries, Iraq and India.
Taking their experience from multinational companies such as GE, Subrato and Anand have developed their own style of leadership.
“We believe in leading from the front, supporting our team and encouraging and empowering them,” shared Anand.
“As the company grows our colleagues have the opportunity to grow too. We have retained a majority of our staff since 2009, and many that have left have returned,” added Subrato, “we benchmark our benefits and packages against the leading players in the industry”.
Proudly Customer Focussed
AquaChemie supports a range of sectors including both upstream and downstream oil and gas, construction, paints and coatings, and fertiliser and agriculture.
The business can supply a variety of chemicals including organic and inorganic hydrocarbons, aromatic solvents, alcohols, chlorinated solvent, additives, and oilfield chemicals, to name just a few.
In addition, the speciality chemicals company offers support services such as sulfiding services for hydro-processing catalysts, entire supply chain contracts, analytical services, and waste disposal.
AquaChemie’s USP is that it combines both experienced management with technical understanding, giving it the ability to “speak the customer’s language”.
“We pride ourselves on both our reliability and availability,” said Anand, with AquaChemie supporting its customers 24/7, 365.
“Our customers work around the clock, and downtime can be incredibly expensive, so we must support them around the clock too,” he continued, “we are considered partners to our customers rather than suppliers”
AquaChemie believes that its customers are buying performance not a chemical, and so it provides added value by offering further insight such as benchmarking.
From 2020 onwards, industries worldwide have faced significant supply chain issues, which AquaChemie have been able to overcome for its customers.
“Despite the challenges we were able to supply our customers on time throughout the pandemic and onwards. We saw fantastic opportunities to support new customers during this time which optimised our growth,” said Subrato.
AquaChemie also works in partnership with its customers on sustainable initiatives, supplying green chemicals for turnaround decontamination of equipment, and has a team dedicated to this area. As well as supplying green chemicals, it supports customers in reducing the CO2 produced by the chemicals used.
A Groundbreaking New Terminal
The business has also been able to implement sustainable measures into the state-of-the-art environmental design of its new chemical terminal at Jebel Ali Port. The terminal serves as a hub to boost the petrochemical trade in the region and outside.
Amongst its features are dedicated API pumps for ship back loading, tanker truck loading, drum filling and inter tank transfers, five semi-automatic drum filling machines and a processing and blending plant.
As well as these practical elements, AquaChemie also offers inventory management and supply chain management at the terminal.
“Using our efficient, central, ERP system we can manage everything from physical inventory, outbound and material tracking, and physical returns in real-time. We can also handle everything from loading to transporting,” explained Anand, “we can then support customers with export clearance and documentation and ensure that reliable and fast inland logistics delivers the goods and documentation on time”.
Since its inauguration in February 2023, the terminal has seen great success and systems growing stronger.
“The $50 million terminal is set to be one of the most versatile bulk liquid terminals in the GCC with a storage volume of over 34,000 cu m, boosting petrochemical trade across the Middle East and globally,” said DP World, the owner and operator of Jebel Ali Port.
AquaChemie is anticipating positive return on the terminal (which has a gross revenue target of $300 million over the next three years) which will be announced at the end of the 2023 financial year.
Perfect Timing
Despite being in business for 12 years and seeing significant growth through challenging times, it feels as though fate has allowed good timing for the business for 2023 and beyond.
With the UAE and Saudi Arabian regions in a period of growth, co-founders Subrato and Anand foresee significant business increase in the area.
“With positive political movements happening in regions such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, I think there is an optimistic outlook ahead. We’ll continue to focus our growth in GCC, along with Iraq and India,” shared Subrato.
The business also has plans for growth within its product line, focussing on its customers in upstream oil and gas, as well as foreseeing further growth in paints, coatings and industrial ink.
“With our growth plans we anticipate the need to increase our staffing levels by around 25% to meet demand,” said Anand.
AquaChemie and its governance believe that now is a fantastic time for businesses to expand into the Gulf.
“The region is growing and both supply and demand is good. Now is a fantastic time to explore business opportunities in the GCC,” said Anand.