LITOCLEAN, featured in an article in Expansión newspaper

The CEO of TEMA LITOCLEAN, Begoña Mundó, states that the company is preparing to enter the Persian Gulf.

Access to Expansión newspaper article in paper

Litoclean explores entry into the Persian Gulf and anticipates record sales

The soil decontamination firm estimates growth of 31% in 2018, to 11 million. The company chaired by Alberto Tasias accelerates in Latin America and will grow in Kuwait and Qatar.

The business in Spain cannot grow any further, so the only option to gain size is to expand abroad. Litoclean, an engineering firm specializing in consulting and soil decontamination, began its internationalization in Mexico in 1992, six years after it was founded in Barcelona. That venture initially failed, but today the company has an active presence, with its own subsidiaries, in the North American country, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Now it believes that the time has come to take another leap in Chile and to enter the Persian Gulf.

The company had a turnover of 8.8 million euros last year and expects to reach 11.5 million euros in 2018. This turnover, if achieved, would surpass the sales record reached in 2011, which was 10.5 million. “It’s an ambitious budget, but we’re doing well,” sums up its CEO, Begoña Mundó. She is one of the four owners of the company, with different shareholdings, but all around 25%. She and the president, Alberto Tasias, are the only shareholders working in engineering, while the other two, Ramon Bassas and Jaume Ferrús, are equity partners. The company, which has 160 employees, also has offices in Madrid and A Coruña, and a warehouse in Rubí (Vallès Occidental). Its headquarters are in the city of Barcelona.

Genesis

Engineering is the sum of Litoclean itself -consulting and project execution; 70% of the business- and the industrial safety consultancy in the chemical and oil industries Tema, the name under which the group was created in 1986, with 30% of turnover. Sixty percent of global revenue in 2017 came from abroad. Among the clients Litoclean works with are CLH, Repsol, Pemex, Petroperú and Basf, among others.

In the case of the Persian Gulf, the company had been subcontracted by Spanish companies to carry out oil well decontamination projects. Its intention now is, once its clients have executed these projects, to try to contract directly with the local company for maintenance. Litoclean is therefore exploring the options of landing in Kuwait and Qatar. Mundó recalls that when landing in a new country, it takes at least three years before money can be made. The strategy in Latin America is to concentrate on the most profitable countries rather than to establish itself in new markets. “In Ecuador and Bolivia there is not so much activity, and there is more movement in Mexico and Peru,” explains the CEO.

Flagship contract


In Chile,” continues the director, “we have just been awarded a contract for US$ 260,000, which is emblematic for us because it could open the doors of the country for us to bid for new contracts and because of the complexity of the project”. It is a contract to analyze how to decontaminate 42 ponds into which sludge from oil extraction in the Magallanes region has been dumped.

Not all the actions are located abroad. In Catalonia, Litoclean has taken on the project management of a metal decontamination project for the Catalan Waste Agency (ACR) in Sant Llorenç d’Hortons (Alt Penedès). “We will try to treat these metals, such as antimony, to avoid moving the soil from one place to another, which is what was done until now,” he says.


Hardships and rewards of being in the jungle

One of the problems that, according to Mundó, Litoclean has abroad is finding personnel willing to go to work in other
countries. This is not the case of Manel Fernández, now business manager in Mexico and previously responsible in Argentina (a country the company has already left) for ten years and in Ecuador for three more.

In Mexico, its main client has been Pemex. The firm has been awarded a contract for an environmental impact study and
social management (to promote the development of the communities neighboring the facilities) for one million euros; nine fields are involved, the most important of which covers 500 wells in a 156 square kilometer area. The Peruvian subsidiary, which represents 30% of the group’s business, is managed by Albert Tasias, son of the company’s chairman. One of the peculiarities is the activity in industrial safety applied to rivers, which in the jungle are the “highways to transport the
hydrocarbons,” he says. “You work in the jungle, in an environment where you can spend three days sailing or going to
on foot to get there; sometimes you need to go with a security person, a nurse and local personnel to open the way; they are spectacular landscapes for which some people would pay to go on vacation,” he concludes.