Gulf Construction Online - R&M expands in Saudi Arabia

Cables & Telecommunications

At the opening of the new office in Riyadh are (from left) Reichle, Reinhardt, Labry and Ali.

R&M expands in Saudi Arabia

Reichle & De Massari’s first office in Saudi Arabia is very much in line with its plans for expansion in the region. A planned assembly facility in Riyadh and an increased sales force in Jeddah and Dammam will complement the new office.

01 August 2012

SWISS structured cabling specialist Reichle & De Massari (R&M) has opened an office in Riyadh – its first in Saudi Arabia — to meet the growing demand for its innovative copper and fibre range in the kingdom.

The move is in line with R&M’s regional expansion plans and its strategy of providing strong local customer support.
The official launch was held in Riyadh in the presence of the Swiss ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Peter Reinhardt, and company owner and executive board member Martin Reichle. During the event, R&M also recognised its business partners in the enterprise and telecommunications market segments, along with major end-users in the kingdom.

To complement R&M’s new sales office, the company will also establish an assembly facility in Riyadh and has increased its sales force in Dammam and Jeddah to effectively cover the Eastern and Western provinces of the country.

R&M’s increased Saudi presence is in line with its philosophy enhancing its service to its customer base by being close to them on the ground. The company already possesses a successful track record in the kingdom, having completed several notable cabling projects in recent years such as providing a new end-to-end state-of-the-art network cabling infrastructure to a leading government healthcare facility.

Growth in Saudi Arabia for R&M’s products has primarily been driven by the kingdom’s boom in information technology (IT) spending, which is according to recent figures is expected to hit $5.7 billion by 2014, fuelled by rapid growth in the broadband market.

Sophisticated network infrastructure is needed to support data applications such as e-commerce, rich media, and Internet Protocol television (IPTV). R&M’s intelligently designed cabling solutions provide the essential underlying foundation for such scalable networks, says the company.

Commenting on the opening of the new office, Reichle says: “The opportunities in the kingdom’s IT sector are very significant and underscores the country’s farsightedness and long-term vision. We’re extremely pleased to be contributing to the country’s growth.”

Jean-Pierre Labry, executive vice-president, R&M Middle East and Africa, says: “The Saudi market is our near-term strategic focus due to the tremendous demand potential we see here. This is across several industry verticals such as health, finance, telecom/public networks, and real estate. Our increased staff will enable us to be more proactive and responsive to customers and market needs.”

He says customer demand is one of the key drivers behind the company’s expansion as it’s witnessing an uptake in IT spending in Saudi Arabia. Nearly every industry vertical is now investing heavily in network infrastructure to satisfy current and future broadband needs at the enterprise and end-user level.

“As part of our customer-focused approach of having a strong local presence, we’ve opened the Saudi office to ensure the product delivery speed, quality, and reliability R&M is renowned for is carried through,” he adds.

R&M’s Saudi office also offers sales support for the company’s trademark modular solutions. Its expert technical team can design the optimised solution for any industry vertical, backed by the company’s assurance of high quality and design functionality. Each product is backed by a first-in-the-industry 25 years of warranty, he says.

R&M Saudi managing director Manzoor Ali says: “Our objective is not to move a box, but to offer customised solutions designed to fit customer requirements. This philosophy, coupled with our award-winning product portfolio, has consistently made us one of the region’s market leaders.”

R&M participated in the Gitex Saudi Arabia 2012 event in April to unveil its latest breakthrough copper and fibre solutions. It was the second consecutive year R&M participated in Saudi Arabia’s most prominent IT event.

R&M’s innovative modular end-to-end copper and fibre solutions are a good fit for the type of large-scale infrastructure projects now being undertaken in Saudi Arabia, says a company spokesman. “Large-scale projects can also go green starting from their network infrastructure by installing R&M’s energy and space-efficient cabling solutions that are manufactured in a green facility.”

To speed product delivery to its customers and the region, R&M inaugurated its Middle East and Africa (MEA) supply chain hub at its regional office headquarters in the UAE early last year. This type of first level supply chain support is only the second in the world after R&M’s hub in Singapore.

R&M, one of the largest companies in Switzerland wholly owned by the Swiss Reichle family, develops and produces cabling solutions for communications networks. It has earned a reputation as a quality leader with its excellent copper and fibre-optic products. The company has its own marketing organisations in more than 30 countries, and generates 75 per cent of its sales from overseas markets. It invests more than $9 million in research and development every year.

Regionally, R&M has been present in Middle East and North Africa (Mena) for over 14 years, where it is one of the top three structured cabling players, having executed numerous network infrastructure projects throughout Saudi Arabia and the region.

R&M maintains local offices in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE, providing over 5,500 modular copper and fibre solutions for data centre/structured cabling as well as telecom/FTTx/utilities. The company is well known for its FTTx solutions and is claimed to be the leading FTTx passive solution provider in MEA. Its forward-looking design philosophy throughout its entire product range highlights R&M’s commitment to bringing enterprises and end-users innovative products with current and future communications needs in mind, the spokesman concludes.