Simar Projects plans stake in power sector

Simar Projects and Infrastructure Limited, a company backed by some Nigerians and Indians, has entered into the country’s power sector with operational and maintenance expertise said to be lacking in the nation’s private sector-driven power industry.

Doyle Edeni, the managing director/CEO of the company, who recently announced the commencement of operations at a press briefing in Lagos, said: “We are at a time in Nigeria where we require at least 60,000 megawatts of power and we are generating about 4,000 megawatts thus leaving a huge gap to be filled. Even if all the power plants in the country are working at full capacity, we will still not be able to generate half of what the country needs for industrial growth.”

Despite the huge opportunity in the power sector, Edeni decried the dearth of adequate technical manpower needed to effectively drive the system.

He said: “Many of the plants have not been properly maintained while some of their parts are obsolete. Also, some of the plants have been bought by companies whose core competency is not in plant operations. We have the technical capacity to turn around some of these plants.”

According to him, a good number of indigenous engineers have limited capacity because they are employed in plants that are not running optimally.

He explained that the company, which had been registered in Nigeria since June 2014, entered into the country to provide extra technical capacity required in the power and petrochemical industries.

In view of this, Edeni said Simar would set up a facility to train Nigerians and also expose them to hands-on experience abroad.

He said, “We are making a commitment in setting up a training facility in the country. We are talking with some agencies and some of the investors over training and exposing them to hands-on operational knowledge.”

He said the company’s operations and maintenance expertise would be deployed to help the new power investors run their plants more efficiently.

The company, according to him, offers services such as engineering, designing, fabrication, erection, testing, operation and maintenance of refineries, petrochemicals, fertilisers, thermal power plants up to 700 megawatts and solar power plants.

He said Simar was also willing to make equity commitment to any of its prospective clients in order to be given the opportunity to prove what it can and ready to do in the Nigerian market.

Edeni also pointed out that some of the country’s new power plants were built by the Chinese while observing that their manuals were written in Chinese thereby making it difficult for local engineers to operate.

“We have a unique technical capacity in Simar to develop a manual that can be used to operate the power plants irrespective of whether the equipment was manufactured in China or Russia.”

According to Edeni, the company has the capacity to engage in EPC contracts and has been given the opportunity to re-engineer a small unit in one of the refineries with the hope that this will be expanded.

Jaswinder Singh, the chairman of the company, said the top three plants in India are owned by the group, while promising that the company would deploy its technical capability to help improve power generation in Nigeria.

Reginald Ifionu, a director with the company, who was a former CEO of Sapele Power Plant, said, “privatising the power sector is a major positive step achieved by the government. Certain circumstances are still impeding the kind of progress we hope to see. Some of these things are things Simar is in a position to deal with better than other companies.

“Simar is ready to develop local content and make our people technically capable to efficiently and reliably run the power plants,” as the company had already set up a big operational yard in Port Harcourt as part of efforts to boost local content in the country.