A boost for SMEs

JURONG Island is not just about the big MNCs. The chemicals hub there has also helped to lift the capabilities of Singapore small and medium enterprises (SMEs) such as Tiong Woon, Rotary Engineering, HSL Constructor, Hiap Seng and Hai Leck.

When Jurong Aromatics Corporation was building its S$2.9 billion petrochemicals complex, the job of transporting a giant column - weighing nearly 1,150 tonnes and over 100 metres tall - from the jetty to the site over a distance of 9 km went to Tiong Woon, a listed firm that provides services to the oil & gas, petrochemicals, infrastructure and construction sectors.

Besides designing and building a temporary jetty, Tiong Woon also had to remove 300 trees along the roads to make way for the xylene splitter column, the third largest in the world, before replanting them again.

Another company that has benefited from Jurong Island projects is Hiap Seng.

"The projects on Jurong Island require deep technical expertise and experience," said Tan Hak Jin, chief financial officer of Hiap Seng. "It has certainly been very helpful in helping us build our success and reputation in the industry as a leading integrated service provider to the oil-and-gas and petrochemicals industries."

With global players plonking more into Singapore projects, "we have seen that the infrastructure projects secured by Hiap Seng have correspondingly become more technically sophisticated and the quantum of each contract being larger", added Mr Tan.

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