Electrical contractor Cegelec Morocco has found itself poised to capture some very promising new markets, as CFO and business development director Michel Bouskila explained to John O’Hanlon.
Since its creation in 1946, Cegelec Morocco has been an important partner to the large state electricity, mining and water enterprises, as well as the country’s oil company SAMIR in providing electrical engineering services. It employs over 2,000 people, many of them highly specialised engineers.
Cegelec has a long history of supporting the country’s power infrastructure, and is the only Moroccan company capable of designing and installing new overhead 400 kV power lines and pylons. “We did face international competition when we tendered for two contracts for ONE (the national electricity corporation), totalling 370 kilometres of 400 kV line in the southern part of Morocco earlier this year,” says CFO and business development director Michel Bouskila. “But nothing from local companies. We have an excellent fabrication plant in Casablanca to produce the pylons, and fantastic installation teams too.” Line work is hard, and these guys have to be tough, he explains, so they tend to be from the mountains where they are used to Morocco’s desertic seasonal extremes of temperature.
Moroccohas no oil of its own, so it has to live on its wits to a greater extent than many African countries. However it has always been a great tourist magnet. The tourist industry has been hit by the recession, Bouskila admits, and this has put the brake on new hotel building; however, he hopes this will just be a temporary blip. Hotels have complicated energy requirements, and Cegelec has been working towards securing this niche market.
When it was presented with a tight schedule to install the HVAC systems at the newly-refurbished Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, frequented in its heyday by Winston Churchill, the work was done jointly with Cegelec France. “We treated Mamounia as a training exercise and learned a lot in the process,” Bouskila says. “But when we moved on to the much larger Four Seasons resort we were able to do the job entirely with Moroccan skills and resources.” This time the job included not only HVAC but all the electrical installation, including fire systems and even CCTV. “We want to differentiate ourselves in the market by being a one-stop shop.”
This approach is paying off in other expanding sectors. The company has just won the contract to wire up three very large office blocks being erected at Casashore, a 53 hectare zone in Casablanca dedicated to offshoring businesses that has already attracted large French banking and industrial customers. “We are hoping this will lead to more offshoring contracts in other parts of the country,” he says.
Offshoring and automotive plants are new departures for a company still more associated with power transmission. However, electric rail systems present similar problems, relying on overhead catenaries mounted on pylons. In 2009 Cegelec was awarded the job of electrifying the first tramway network in Morocco. The 18 kilometre-long line, with 32 stations, will link the two cities of Rabat and Sale and Cegelec is responsible for the engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning of 17 sub-stations as well as the overhead lines.
The first trams will run in January 2011, but Cegelec has already landed the country’s next tramway project at Casablanca. “Rabat is 18 kilometres, whereas Casablanca will be 30 kilometres, and the work will be harder because there is more traffic: in both projects we are working with Cegelec Transport, which has built tram systems all over the world, but all the time we are gaining local expertise.”
All of this is encouraging, and in addition it should be pointed out that Cegelec has ongoing partnership agreements to maintain SAMIR’s oil refinery at Mohammedia and is one of a handful of approved contractors to the world’s largest phosphate producer, OCP Group. However, what really excites Bouskila are some truly massive opportunities in alternative power he says he never would have encountered in France, where he had been working as regional director of Sogetrel before joining Cegelec in January 2010.
He is keen to see Cegelec take a key role in the emerging solar market. “Morocco is investing $9 billion in solar capacity. They have chosen the concentrated solar power [CSP]technology and there are about 18 consortia applying for concessions here.” He expects contracts to be coming along in the next few months and is determined to secure the power transmission and substation work for the first array, which is to be built at Ouarzazate.
Moroccohopes to be able to produce 40 per cent of its electricity from five different locations in the country, substantially reducing its reliance on imported oil. Massive though the Moroccan solar project is, it would be dwarfed by the largest green initiative ever planned, the German Desertec project which aims to supply solar power from the Sahara to Europe. The $400 billion scheme, if it gets off the ground, would have to transmit power through Morocco, he believes
In another recent development, ONE announced that Nareva, the energy arm of the country's biggest conglomerate ONA, would lead construction of a 300 MW wind farm at Tarfaya. In addition to its solar ambitions, Morocco wants to build five wind farms and increase its wind generation capacity tenfold to 2,000 MW by 2020. Cegelec is particularly well placed to design and implement the civil works and electrical installations.
Solar and wind projects are a reality, and on a scale that would satisfy most business development directors, but Bouskila has his eye on another market that is still at the feasibility stage—desalination. He expects the first Moroccan projects to be announced quite soon, and sees this as another great opportunity. http://www.cegelec.com/our-locations/world/morocco.html
