The Dubai World crisis should not frighten Northern Ireland investors off the Gulf region insists Boomer Industries, a Lisburn based company that specialises in operations in the Arabian Gulf.
But investments in the region may need to be regarded as more long-term than was previously the case, said Andrew Robinson, managing director of Boomer, which employs 40 people.
“Boomer is an established company with a strong heritage and extensive experience in the Gulf region,” Mr Robinson said.
“Many smaller firms have been forced out of the market by the recession and the financial drought, but at Boomer we have re-structured and re-focused our operations to prosper in the current transitional climate and to prepare for the up-turn.
“Firms which wait until the storm has passed will have lost crucial preparatory time. We expect that the most successful companies of the next decade will be those that endured the recession by paring down and tooling up with skills and new strategies.”
Boomer, which has a 60,000 sq ft factory at Ferguson Road Industrial Estate, is a leading plastics extruder in the global market, supplying products for new residential, hotel and commercial premises throughout Europe, the Middle East and North America.
Its sales team has visited more than 30 key partners in the last six weeks in Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Mr Robinson said the feedback from these contacts has been “uniformly” positive, with trading partners reporting improved prospects.
But he said the cost of credit insurance in the region has risen after the news that Dubai World cannot service its debts.
But, said Mr Robinson, many construction and development companies have depleted stocks and are now ready to boost inventories. And he added that many Gulf companies have repaired their balance sheets, allowing them to resume investments but at lower costs.