Amphora Set for a Strong Year
A few weeks ago, Amphora announced a deal in China with China Zhenhua Oil, one of the largest crude oil importers in China. According to Ivan O’Toole, Head of Sales & Marketing for Amphora, Amphora has followed this up with a couple of more wins in metals and oil at least one of which should be announced officially in the coming weeks. “It’s been a good year for Amphora so far with 5 new deals,” he told me. These also include ADNOC for shipping and a bunker trader.
“We are not seeing any slowdown. In fact, people are taking a renewed interest,” he said. “It also seems people are much less brand sensitive now as well and we see that buyers have an open mind about functional footprints, and no longer have to buy from a big supplier,” echoing a recent blog I wrote. A lot is coming down to cost in Ivan’s opinion. “Amphora can hit deadlines with time and costs because we have a strong and experienced project team. It’s a new paradigm in which we can implement phase 1 in 3-4 months with confidence.”
Amphora has also hired an experienced veteran in the US to head up their sales efforts there. “We took our eyes off the US market for a while thinking there was no demand, but we now see a strong replacement market developing there and a real appetite to move forward with deals.” Amphora are also looking at China it seems as it will be at the China Expo (CII) with its new customer and partner, Zhenhua Oil.
The vendor also believes that it has a strong LNG offering on the back of its GAIL implementation. GAIL is a Maharatna public sector undertaking primarily engaged in the trading and transmission of natural gas in India. GAIL is present across the gas value chain and is engaged in businesses ranging from exploration and production of oil and natural gas, production of liquid hydrocarbons & petrochemicals and retailing of compressed natural gas/ piped natural gas. “We believe that market will grow on both the consumer and producer sides and we are very bullish about our capabilities to serve that market.”
