Zebrano targets Middle East top spot for custom joinery

Zebrano targets Middle East top spot for custom joinery

Qatar’s UrbaCon Contracting &Trading opens  new factory for specialist woodwork

Zebraco, a Qatari joinery producer and subsidiary of UrbaCon Contracting &Trading (UCC), expects to soon be among the largest providers of customised woodwork in the Middle East.

At present the company holds a 5,000m² factory and training facility outside Doha – already expanded from an initial 3,500m² and with a labour force of around 400 spread across the manufacture and installation operations.

Wasel Kannout, Business Units Director at UCC, details: “The existing facility is temporary, whereas our new factory will be double this size, covering an area of 10,000-12,000m². We are not expanding our activities to cover everything, but specialising in custom-made works.”

Mohamed Moutaz Al Khayyat, CEO of UCC, says: “We will make our factory one of the largest in the Middle East for specialist joinery. This is our plan over the next two years.”

Zebrano’s factory operations employ advanced woodworking machinery operated through a centralised computer system. Much of our wood is then from North America and Europe, where there is a wide north to south climatic range for varieties of woods such as cherry.

Ramez AlKhayat, MD of UCC, notes: “By the second half of the year we plan to be delivering 35% of our capacity outside of the group, and next year will be balanced – using around 50% internally and providing the other 50% to third parties.”

Kannout adds: “We don’t have the plan right now for mass production, however, because this requires a different market than Qatar. Instead, we are focusing on the continuous development of our staff’s expertise and on new machines and on new techniques.”

Zebrano presently has joinery contracts in hand worth almost $20 million, and based on the array of projects now being tendered, expects to book a further $10 million by end 2013.