Mabani Steel, a UAE-based manufacturer of pre-engineered steel buildings (PEBs) and hot-rolled steel structures, has announced major expansion plans that entail setting up a production facility in Saudi Arabia.

The company's facilities in Ras Al Khaimah currently occupy a 125,000 sq m site, which houses its 3,000 sq m head office building, a 27,000 sq m cluster of factories – which have a monthly production capacity of 6,000 tonnes of PEBs and 2,000 tonnes of hot-rolled steel structures – and a 5,000 sq m residential camp.
"The Saudi expansion will duplicate our Ras Al Khaimah production facility and will add a monthly production capacity of 6,000 tonnes of PEBs and 2,000 tonnes of hot-rolled steel structures," says Muayyad Khudairi, president. "Engineering services will be provided by Mabani Steel's head office in the UAE. The primary purpose of this considerable expansion is to capture a sizeable share of the PEB market in Saudi Arabia and to gain access to the steel building market in Europe and Africa."
The company has already established sales offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Riyadh and Muscat and intends to open sales offices in Jeddah, Dammam, Doha, Manama, Kuwait City in the Arabian Gulf as well as in Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan, during the first quarter of next year.
"Mabani Steel's vision is to become the most innovative, most trusted and most reliable manufacturer of PEBs and hot-rolled steel structures in the Middle East and Pakistan, Africa and India and intends to exceed its customers' expectations at each stage of the order fulfillment process. It aims to build one main campus (head office plus factory) and one or more satellite factories in each of these three regions," says Khudairi.
Commercial production of PEBs at Ras Al Khaimah began in April this year with production currently running at 1,500 tonnes per month (tpm), which will gradually increase to reach 6,000 tpm by next April. Production of hot-rolled steel structures will begin in January next year, initially at 500 tpm increasing to 2,000 by the year-end.
Mabani Steel is a limited liability company that is majority owned by the Al-Rajhi Investment Group and Al Mashaal Investment Group, both from prominent Saudi families.
The executive management is made up of Khudairi (president) and Ken Krieger (vice president), who have worked together in this region for 30 years and have been responsible for the three largest and most successful PEB manufacturing companies in the GCC countries.
The company, which is already being acknowledged as the new benchmark in PEB, has acquired the US-developed MBS Software, a comprehensive engineering software for the design and detailing of PEBs, which has been vetted by more than 1,000 engineers (in 120 PEB manufacturing companies) who use it everyday, claims Khudairi.
"Mabani Steel complies with the latest editions of the US codes that are applicable to PEB design, unlike some other manufacturers in this region which use 30 to 40-year-old less stringent editions of these codes. This shortsighted practice of noncompliance with the latest editions reduces steel content while potentially threatening long-term building performance and safety," he comments.
The firm has designed its own auto-welding, blasting and painting equipment, which were then manufactured by world-class equipment builders with the aim of gaining a competitive advantage, in both quality and speed of throughput, over local PEB manufacturers, Khudairi adds.
Mabani Steel has developed world-class technical PEB literature and has built a 60-seat auditorium for conducting both in-house training and technical orientation seminars for the staff of consultants, general contractors and government approval authorities to help them plan and construct one to three-storey buildings efficiently and economically using the versatile and fast PEB system. Companies interested in enrolling in one of these seminars should contact the firm's sales department.