Beyond the Core

It may not be the most glamorous equipment in the plant, but without the right cable all those signals from the field would not get very far. Nigel Christopher, President, Dekoron Wire & Cable talks to CE Asia.

CEA: Dekoron recently set up its first office in Asia. The reasonbehind this move?

NC: Dekoron had been doing business in the region for many years, but with somewhat intermittent representation. So we opened a sales and support office in Singapore at the beginning of 2007, with a view to steadily increasing our business in this part of the world. The Singapore office acts as the company HQ for the Middle East as well as Asia Pacific, and includes warehouse facilities from which we can receive, process, and ship our cable products.

CEA: All the products are manufactured in the US?

NC: Yes, that’s right, at Mount Pleasant, Texas, where we have our sole production plant. Dekoron is a US company that began manufacturing instrumentation cables more than 50 years ago. In 1999, it was bought by the Marmon Group, an international conglomerate of more than 60 manufacturing and service firms, including other wire and cable companies such as Aetna, Cable USA, and Comtran.

CEA: The main offering is still instrumentation cable?

NC: Yes, we do make control cables as well, but our core product is the cable that carries 4 to 20 mA signals from process plant instruments back to the control room. In a refinery, transmission lengths can be one or two kilometers, so the cable must be capable of carrying fairly weak signals reliably over long distances. If the control system does not receive the right signal then it can make the wrong decision, hence, while at first glance the cable may not appear to be so important, it is critical to the whole control system working as it should.

CEA: And how long have you been with the company?

NC: I joined the company in 2004 and have a background of more than 20 years in process industry equipment supplier companies, including Invensys and Flowserve, Since coming onboard, I have been looking to improve operations and customer service, as well as expand sales resources. In 2005, the Mount Pleasant manufacturing facility was expanded, adding capacity and new equipment, and introducing lean manufacturing concepts.

CEA: What type of developments are we seeing in the product?

NC: The basic product – shielded instrumentation cable – goes back to the 1960s, but over the years, there have been steady improvements in terms of the materials used, such as flame retardants to enable enhanced protection in case of fire, and armoring options to provide physical protection.

CEA: Which industries do youserve?

NC: Our main business is in refineries, petrochemical plants, and power generation facilities. We also supply to other process industries such as wastewater, pharmaceuticals, pulp & paper, and steelmills.

CEA: Are you seeing increased demand for digital fieldbus cable over traditional 4-to-20 analog?

NC: We do supply fieldbus cables but these tend to be for smaller scale plants in water treatment, pharma, etc, – rather than the refineries and power plants that are our main markets. While there are certainly benefits from all the additional diagnostic data you can get, you have to play this off against what users are comfortable with and how much risk they are prepared to take. Even in Asia, where there are more greenfield sites, we see key parts of the process still controlled with conventional systems, with fieldbus used for the more peripheral areas like tank farms.

CEA: What is Dekoron’s competitive positioning?

NC: We are definitely at the premium end of the market, and we wouldn’t chase after projects where price is the only consideration. We have established a good reputation for short, reliable lead times, and unlike most of our competitors, instrumentation cable is pretty much all we do, so there is a lot of focus and expertise for this market.

It is the electrical & instrument a t i o n contractors, who do the installation and commissioning, that have to bear the brunt when there are cable issues, and they often insist on using our products because they know it is unlikely to give them any problems. In addition, to meet particular applications, clients often ask us for variations on the standard product range and so we do have the capabilityto do customization work.

CEA: Are you seeing more awareness in industry of cable’s role in contributing to a robust control system?

NC: I think it goes in cycles. There was a phase during which the emphasis from the decision makers, especially in the US, went too far in the direction of driving down cost from equipment suppliers. But after a while, it became apparent to operations and engineering people that this was causing problems – the downtime in a refinery is not worth the cost of saving a few cents on a meter of cable. Now the pendulum has swung back in favor of ensuring that the right quality cable is used. This makes sense when you consider that the life of a plant is 30+ years and the cable needs to have a similar longevity.

CEA: And your ambitions for Asia?

NC: Essentially, to continue to build our business. The market conditions are such that there is plenty of scope for us to expand right across the region. In particular, we are looking for customers that we can build long term relationships with, such as we already have in the US with the big oil companies. Some of them are looking to extend their operations out here and we look forward to being part of the picture.

Nigel Christopher

picture 1