Making “the Most Reliable” Engineering Impact with a Commitment to Sustainability

Michael Yang, CTCI Group Vice Chairman & Group Engineering Business CEO

As Taiwan’s largest engineering services provider and among the top 100 engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractors in the world, CTCI is regarded as an important player in the global EPC sector. For a company that is firmly rooted in Taiwan and maps its strategies worldwide, it is always facing heated global competition. At the same time, it identifies smart technologies and global environment as crucial issues in its business development. We are what we do: Being “the Most Reliable” service provider means that we relentlessly seek to enhance our global competitive edge by creating differentiated services as well as investing in innovative technologies and services. Being “the Most Reliable” means that we pursue the goal of global sustainability with a determination to use our expertise to deliver projects that are supreme in quality and environment-friendly, regardless where they are located. We will continue to maximize our engineering impact.

Differentiation is What Sets Us Apart from the Rest of the World

Over the last 40 years, CTCI has expanded its global EPC businesses, first by setting its foot in Asia, then reaching out to the Middle East and the Americas. With more than 40 affiliates around the world, we are agile in coping with local market demands by swiftly adjusting our organizations and integrating group resources. We aim to continue strengthening all affiliates’ capabilities in carrying out EPC projects independently, furthering our global competitiveness.

One example that shows how we adjusted our organizations and integrated resources is by boosting CTCI Americas’ status to become a Regional Center with Profit & Loss (P&L), expanding its organizational functions, and granting it more power. To keep its edge in the U.S. shale gas market, CTCI Americas enjoys full support in terms of highly competitive designs and procurement resources from CTCI’s head office in Taipei. This differentiated strategy is how CTCI Americas gains a competitive edge over its counterparts in the U.S. Another great example is the merging of CTCI Beijing and CTCI Shanghai, which sees a fusion of refinery, petrochemical, environmental, and energy-related technologies and resources. This is proven to be a success, as for the first time in history the merged company is awarded an independent EPC contract with an unprecedented worth of over 10 billion New Taiwan dollars. Meanwhile, cryogenic storage tanks and high-voltage manufacturing process projects have also seen fruitful results. 

As another sign of our ever-increasing businesses and striving for excellence, we were successfully awarded a contract for speciality chemicals project in Singapore early this year. This marks an expansion of our businesses from trackworks to refinery and petrochemicals markets in Singapore. In Vietnam, our affiliated company CIMAS has proven it is capable of not just making detailed designs but also undertaking small-scale EPC tasks as well. The EPCC contract for Van Phong-1 supercritical coal-fired power plant marks a new milestone for CTCI advancing into Vietnam power plant market. In Thailand, the total contract value CTCI Thailand independently secured has hit an all-time high 2.8 billion Thai baht, and it will continue to dedicate itself to building capabilities in undertaking mid- to large-scale EPC projects. 

Back in Taiwan, our subsidiary CTCI Chemicals Corporation (CTCI CHC) is now a total solutions provider in chemical additives and aims for overseas markets. CTCI Machinery Corporation (CTCI MAC), on the other hand, has been attentive to the government’s plans for nuclear power plants decommissioning and successfully sets foot in Taiwan’s offshore wind farm markets with its machinery fabrication expertise.

As to the Middle East, which remains an important refinery market in the world, CTCI Arabia is now at full throttle seeking new projects in Qatar, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi, with optimistic business growth in the foreseeable future.

Pioneering a New Outlook by Innovating EPC Services

An ambition to provide full services to our clients demands us to continue exploring innovative service models and expanding service scopes. By successfully covering the upstream front-end engineering design (FEED), which is more difficult technically, it allows us to have better chance of securing EPC contracts later on. Currently, we have multiple FEED projects going on around the world, which are scheduled to move on to the EPC stage this year. By getting a head start in FEED, it ensures we gain more competitive edge over our competitors and discover bigger business opportunities.

Our second innovation aims for minimalizing construction time and cost. Factors like geographical, weather conditions, and labor force may negatively impact site construction in terms of project time and cost. To effectively cope with this issue, we made a breakthrough with modularization technology. A prime example is the ongoing Gulf Coast Growth Ventures Monoethylene Glycol (GCGV MEG) project-- a joint-venture between ExxonMobil and SABIC. Being the world’s largest land-based modularization project, fabrication takes place simultaneously in six countries. Once the modules are completed, they will be shipped to the U.S. for final assembly. As a contractor of this project, CTCI is fully recognized for its modularization capabilities. We will continue refining our modularization expertise. It is our belief that not only does this bring us better competitive edge, but it can help us better serve our clients and deliver cost-effective engineering services. 

A third innovation in our services is called “intelligent EPC”, or “iEPC” for short. As part of our ongoing effort to apply smart technologies to EPC projects, we currently have over 70 projects worldwide that have adopted iEPC technologies. Not only would the services enable us to optimize our project workflows, but they can also allow our clients to examine design details through virtual plants during planning stage. By gathering all project information through iEPC, we can attempt to foresee the future, make decisions accordingly, and enhance work efficiency. Such innovation will take us to a new level of engineering services, kick-start industry upgrading, and usher in a brand new outlook in the EPC sector.

Spreading Our Influences and Contributing to Global Sustainability

Apart from engineering innovations, CTCI is actively contributing to global sustainability with its core competencies. Our goal is to help our clients worldwide to attain their business goals without sacrificing the environment. To do so, we apply green engineering, recycling, and reusing expertise with respect to solar, air, water, and energy resources. Multiple key environmental projects have been completed over the past year.

Take the pressing issue of water resources, for example. CTCI specializes in water and wastewater treatment for over 20 years across various industry sectors. In recent years, having spotted business opportunities in the water circular economy, we have invested in water reclamation engineering, which now sees fabulous results. Fengshan Wastewater Reclamation Unit, a build-transfer-operate (BTO) project in Taiwan completed last August, can supply up to 45,000 cubic meters per day (CMD) of regenerated water to Linhai Industrial Park. This figure is expected to jump to 100,000 CMD once the Linhai Wastewater Treatment Plant and Reclaimed Water BTO Project is completed in 2021. Recently we have set another milestone by being awarded a wastewater treatment and effluent reclamation plant project for a client in the high-tech industry. This is a recognition of our expertise in water resources as well as an opportunity to set our foot in a new business field.

Turning to power plant projects, CTCI is an expert in delivering supreme quality to power plant projects that take into account of increasing power demand and air pollution. We are pleased to have taken part in Taiwan’s first coal-fired ultra-supercritical (USC) power plant EPC project for our client Taipower. Three generating sets at Lin Kou Power Plant, totaling 2,400 MW, are now in commercial operation since October 2019. Not only do they ensure stable power supply in the country, but also marks a new era of highly efficient coal-fired power generation in Taiwan. We accomplish this mission by employing state-of-the-art power technologies and pollution prevention techniques, many of which are better than regulatory requirements. The way steam and water circulate in the boiler contributes to lower water consumption during electricity generating, and as a result becomes more environment-friendly.

In recent years, Taiwan is actively making transition to renewable energies. Apart from conventional fossil fuel power plant construction/renewal projects, CTCI supports Taiwanese government’s green power policy. In continuation of our success in photovoltaic system development in Taiwan and abroad, we have been awarded an offshore wind turbine substructure transition piece project, also in Taiwan. In addition, the Taoyuan City Biomass Energy Center project, once completed, will become the first waste processing plant for over the last 20 years that employs cutting-edge international technologies. Its power generating efficiency will be higher than any of the 24 waste incinerators currently in operation in Taiwan, while its flue gas will be much cleaner than as required by international standards. This brings double benefits, as waste is properly handled and electricity is generated along the way.

CTCI will continue its journey around the world by serving our clients with up-to-date technologies and innovative engineering, no matter where they are. As “the Most Reliable Global Engineering Services Provider”, we envision to bring quality engineering worldwide and become the most trusted brand.