Almarin: 85 Years Strong

Your company is celebrating its 85th anniversary this year. Please provide an overview of your activities.
    The Lindley group of companies began its activities in 1930 with the establishment of Ahlers, Lindley, Lda. as a distributor of harbour and industrial equipment in Lisbon, Portugal. Today the group activities evolved to manufacture, distribution and service of port infrastructure. 
    Ahlers Lindley and Almarin share engineering and production capabilities pooling design and manufacture of fixed and floating structures for the marine environment. Almovi is a market leader in industrial and port handling equipment with highly trained technicians that do maintenance and make repair to equipment in the most demanding conditions. Each company has a qualified staff capable of providing service to customers wherever it may be required. Based in Europe (Lisbon and Barcelona), the geographic presence of Grupo Lindley has been mainly in Europe and in the African and Latin American markets.

The organization sounds diverse. Can you “put some meat on the bone” as we say, describing the three companies of Grupo Lindley?
    The three companies of Grupo Lindley are:
•    ALMARIN, based in Barcelone, is a manufacturer of buoys and beacons for use in marine aids to navigation (AtoN). Specialized in the design, manufacture, supply and installation of AtoN to ensure safety navigation in ports, Almarin uses the Group experience in engineering as well as in-house R&D capabilities to provide custom solutions to each project. To complement its product line, Almarin is the distributor of the leading manufacturers of LED marine lights for use in lighthouses and beacons. The company also incorporates into its equipment other systems such as Racon, AIS, satellite monitoring. 
•    AHLERS LINDLEY, based in Cascais (Portugal), manufactures floating equipment for marinas, leisure harbours and fishing ports. Due to the nature of the business Ahlers Lindley engineering team work closely with customers to provide tailored turnkey solutions. 
•    ALMOVI, based in Cascais (Portugal), is a crane and harbor equipment distributor.  Almovi’s major strength is its service team leading to service contracts, spare parts and complete refurbishments as well as a complete service and technical maintenance all over the world.  Almovi is distributor of the leading manufacturers of industrial and port equipment as Grove, Gottwald, Genie, Marine Travelift and Shuttlelift.

Looking back, what do you count as your company’s biggest achievement ?
Eighty five years of business activity is the evidence that customer value our services. The majority of our customers are long term relationships and being a partner. The recent European crisis had a deep impact in all of our home markets. To have come out in strong financial health with a growing international business is without a doubt a source of satisfaction.  Our need to solve the challenges given by the customers means we are constantly developing new solutions to suit project requirements in the most diverse and hazard environments, for example:
•    We have recently installed navigation buoys in the very challenging Magdalena River in Colombia designed to withstand currents of up to 8 knots and islands of mangroves that float down river.
•    We have also installed 11 river landings in the Kubango River, Angola for the locals to be able to safely access river transport.  The landings included long aerial pedestrian access bridges to avoid the crocodile infested swamps.

Looking back on the past year, looking at the maritime industry as a whole, do you see positive or negative, and why?
    Global trade is increasing driving bigger ships to bigger ports.  We are ceaselessly looking for and finding new and greater reserves of resources in the sea. The marine industry is evermore becoming an item in the agenda of countries with a sea front as they understand the value of the natural resources in every sense, from fossil fuels to alternative energies all the way to tourism. This development, particularly in emerging countries, creates great opportunities for the future.

Looking ahead, what do you see as the defining trends that will drive your business forward in the year(s) ahead?
We will continue target growth in our activities abroad, primarily in Africa and Latin America, this is where we see the largest short term opportunities. For 2016 we also expect an improvement in our home markets where there has been little to no recent investment, although commercial ports in most cases have seen grown in overall volume, and should now be feeling more optimistic. This will hopefully lead to a recovery in expenditure in maintenance and further ahead in investment for capacity growth. 

What is the overall importance of the maritime industry to the whole of your company?
    Directly or indirectly represents 84% of our turnover on an average year.

As the business world grows increasingly complex and competitive, what do you count as the primary strengths of your company that make it stand out?
    We will continue to work with our customers to help them reach their objectives.   Naturally this depends on a professional team who can assist the customer anywhere they may need us providing the right level of service. Finally we will continue to invest in our R&D and engineering staff that are fundamental to driving innovation and providing customers with optimal solutions to their evolving requirements.
 

Meet the CEO
Patrick Lindley, CEO, Grupo Lindley
Patrick Lindley is Managing Director of Almarin and CEO of Grupo Lindley. Grupo Lindley is a group of companies that manufactures and distributes port and industrial equipment. The group has its head office in Cascais (Portugal) with offices in Oporto, Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro and comprises of three active businesses:  Almarin, Marine Aids to Navigation; Lindley, floating equipment for marinas and harbors, and Almovi, cargo handling equipment for industrial and port applications.

(As published in the July 2015 edition of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News - http://magazines.marinelink.com/Magazines/MaritimeReporter)