Irish firm, Kent Stainless has secured some major export orders for 2011.

The company's first venture to the Middle East has resulted in a multi-million euro deal for stainless steel products fabricated in Wexford.

Having been approached in October 2010 to discuss helping with the design and supply of material to a new city being built they were extremely sceptical - especially when the quantities mentioned were a large multiple of any contracts supplied in the past few years.

It seems that an agent in the Middle East made some enquiries from other companies in the market out there and he heard Kent Stainless mentioned independently on two occasions as a recommended supplier and so approached the firm and visiting twice and then brought some Chinese visitors on the third visit and.

A company spokesman said: "As a manufacturing plant, we were very concerned that this Chinese company could take all of our designs and get them manufactured at a lower cost in their own country.

"We had to bring the issue straight out with them over dinner one evening in Wexford – why would a Chinese company travel to Ireland to get something fabricated.

"The explanation was simple - they were not permitted to use any Chinese product in their installation. It seems unusual to us but this was a condition of their contract.

"Once they had to import from somewhere they set about visiting fabrication companies in Germany, Italy and USA.

"Maybe we don't 'talk ourselves up enough' or appear intimidated by the prospects of competing on a worldwide scale, but what they saw in our factory surpassed everything they had seen in their other six factory visits.

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"Flexibility was the key to winning them over. They showed us what they were trying to achieve. We were able to show solutions to some problems straight away from products we had previously manufactured, and for solutions we couldn’t solve straight away, they left having seen that we had the capability to solve them in the following months. And we did."

He continued: "We got a call to go to the market at short notice in February and two of us were on our way to an Enterprise Ireland meeting in Dublin, turned the car around and headed back to Wexford to get our passports and a few shirts, trying to book flights over the phone on the way down.

"We had an indicative list of products they were looking to source and having priced these up at various times in the preceding three months we knew there was certainly €250k - €300k worth of business to pursue. What we did not realise was that beside each product was missing the quantity of each – which had presumed to be '1' After four days on site in a mobile cabin in the desert the figures multiplied greatly and on the Sunday we were instructed by our new agent to miss our flights home the next day and not leave the country until the order is signed.

"Friday is a day off in the Middle East & this became our new deadline. On the Thursday afternoon at 5pm a multi million euro order had been signed by two parties – and a cash deposit had been transferred to the Bank of Ireland in Wexford.

"We see transfers talking three days here – the Chinese company had the money in our account in Wexford on the Friday morning. We landed at 6pm Friday to hear the money had arrived."

Lead times were very tight with the order – once signed the customer wanted delivery in two months which was impossible.

The firm guaranteed four months but along with their changes to designs on a number of occasions delays on their part will make this turn to six months and they expect to have completed the contract in September/October. Many tons of the supplies have been air freighted.

"The contract appeared to come just at the right time for us – we had been finishing 2 major contracts in Dublin Airport T2 and on the Luas in Dublin so we opened up to a quiet month of January," he continued.

"Ironically another contract, which we had been chasing for 18 months, was coming our way in the middle of March. 10 days after we returned from the Middle East we were told we had been successful in securing the contract for handrail supply for South Park of the Olympic Stadium in London.

"It killed us to do this but we had to turn it away to devote our time to our regular customers and to this new Middle East contract," he added.

"We have also secured some significant business in the fit-out of some Pharmaceutical Factories in Belgium – even without the Middle east it looks like sales would have been on a par with or slightly up on last year."

(GK/BMcC)