Appointment of Non-executive Director

RNS Number : 4936J

Plexus Holdings Plc

18 December 2015

 

Plexus Holdings PLC / Index: AIM / Epic: POS / Sector: Oil equipment & services

Plexus Holdings PLC ('Plexus' or 'the Company')

Appointment of Non-Executive Director

Plexus Holdings PLC, the AIM quoted oil and gas engineering services business and owner of the proprietary POS-GRIP® friction-grip method of wellhead engineering, announces the appointment of Ms Kunming Liu to the Board as a Non-Executive Director with immediate effect. 

This appointment forms part of the Company's recently signed licence agreement with Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group ('Jereh') and a share subscription agreement with Jereh International (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd a wholly owned subsidiary of Jereh, the US$3.78 billion Chinese oil services provider, to facilitate the rental, sale and manufacture of Plexus' wellhead equipment into the major Chinese, wider Asian, Brazilian, Indian and Middle East oil and gas markets (see press release 2 July 2015) (the 'Licence Agreement' and the 'Share Subscription Agreement'). The Licence Agreement is a significant milestone for Plexus and in line with its strategy of increasing the global reach of its best in class POS-GRIP® wellhead equipment. 

Ms Liu has over 18 years' experience in corporate finance and financial accounting and is currently the Vice President and Chief Administrator of HITIC Energy, an emerging oil and gas development company based in Canada, which is a subsidiary of Jereh.  During her tenure she has been pivotal in establishing the Company's financial controls, sustainable reporting and stakeholder communications.  Prior to this, Ms Liu was the Financial Director of Jereh Energy Services Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jereh, where she provided a critical role within business operation decisions as well as overseeing the full spectrum of its accounts and financial functions. Before joining Jereh in 2007 she was a costing manager at the medical production and marketing company Yantai Kendall. Additionally Ms Liu holds a major in financial accounting from Shandong Cadres Institute of Economics and Management in China.

Plexus' CEO Ben Van Bilderbeek said, "We are delighted to welcome Kunming to the Board.  Her extensive experience and proven track record in China will be invaluable to us as we enter the next stage of global growth with our licencing partner Jereh. The process of knowledge transfer has begun and we are actively exploring with Jereh opportunities in the territories that they have a licence for, whilst Jereh become familiar with our wellhead technology. The widely reported move away from coal to gas as a result of climate change related commitments, particularly in China will, I believe, over the next five to ten years result in an increasing number of exploration and production gas wells and we expect Jereh and Plexus to play an important role in delivering the best and safest wellhead solutions, particularly for HPHT applications. 

"Despite the current challenges facing the global oil and gas industry, and the resultant impact on operator activity, your board views the next few years as a potentially transformational time for Plexus and our best in class POS-GRIP wellhead equipment, known for its unique technical, safety and time saving capabilities.  As part of such initiatives, we will continue to target our expansion into the main stream oil and gas wellhead volume market across exploration, production and subsea."

Full name of Director:     Kunming Liu            Age:     38

Current directorships:     HITIC Energy Limited

There are no further disclosures to be made in accordance with Schedule 2 (g) of the AIM Rules for Companies.

**ENDS**

For further information please visit www.posgrip.com or contact:

Ben van Bilderbeek	Plexus Holdings PLC	Tel: [phone]
Graham Stevens	Plexus Holdings PLC	Tel: [phone]
Derrick Lee	Cenkos Securities PLC	Tel: [phone]
Nick Tulloch	Cenkos Securities PLC	Tel: [phone]
Felicity Winkles	St Brides Partners Ltd	Tel: [phone]
Frank Buhagiar	St Brides Partners Ltd	Tel: [phone]

**ENDS**

NOTES:

Plexus Holdings PLC

Plexus Holdings PLC, which began trading on AIM in December 2005, is an oil and gas engineering and services business, which supplies wellhead and mudline suspension equipment together with associated equipment and services for exploration and production applications. Based in Aberdeen, with offices in London, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and a presence in Houston, Texas, it has developed and patented a friction-grip method of engineering for oil and gas field wellheads and connectors, POS-GRIP®, which involves deforming one tubular member against another to effect gripping and sealing.

The Company plans to accelerate the roll out of POS-GRIP® wellhead equipment as a superior alternative to current technology and for it to become the future industry standard for wellhead design. In particular, the technology has advantages in High Pressure/High Temperature (HP/HT) and Extreme HP/HT (X-HP/HT) oil and gas environments, for which there is growing global demand and where Plexus is being increasingly recognised as the supplier of choice.

To date, POS-GRIP® wellhead systems have been used or selected to be used in over 350 oil and gas wells by international companies including ADTI, AGR, Apache Energy Australia, BHP Billiton, BG International, BP, Brunei Shell Petroleum, Cairn Energy, Centrica, ConocoPhillips, Dana Petroleum, Dubai Petroleum, ENI, GDF SUEZ, Global Santa Fe, Maersk, Niko Resources, Petro-Canada Trinidad & Tobago, Premier Oil Norge, Red Sea Petroleum Operating Company, Repsol, RWE, Senergy Limited, Shell China, Shell Egypt, Statoil, Silverstone Energy, Talisman Energy, Total, Tullow Oil, and Wintershall.

Importantly, the Company is focussed on extending its proprietary POS-GRIP® technology into an increasing number of subsea applications. In line with this, in March 2011 the Company launched a Joint Industry Project ('JIP') initiative to develop a new subsea wellhead design, the 'Python Subsea Wellhead' utilising its friction-grip technology in collaboration with key oil and gas operators and service companies. BG, Royal Dutch Shell, Wintershall, Maersk, TOTAL, Tullow Oil, ENI, Senergy, ADTI and Oil States Industries Inc. The JIP is nearing completion with final qualification testing of all key features of the product under way, and the resultant Python Subsea Wellhead design will include a combination of key features never before seen in a subsea wellhead which include being rated to 15,000 psi, 4,000,000 pounds of 'instant' casing lockdown capacity, and importantly rigid metal annular seal technology qualified to match the performance of premium connectors. The building of a single string Python Subsea Wellhead system prototype commenced in February, and will be ready for display at the SPE Offshore Europe Exhibition and Conference in Aberdeen ('OE2015') in September.

Plexus is an innovative technology company always looking for opportunities to apply its proprietary POS-GRIP® friction grip method of engineering to new products both within and outside the oil and gas industry. For example Plexus have recently completed a JIP in conjunction with Maersk to develop a downhole HPHT Tieback connector which for the first time allows the reconnection of production casing to HPHT exploration and production wells. In addition the Company has developed and qualified a new product called POS-SET Connector™ which is designed to re-establish a connection onto rough conductor casing previously cut above the seabed to facilitate tieback or abandonment operations. The market for permanent plugging and abandonment of wells is increasing in the North Sea and beyond, and could be an important new revenue stream for the company. 

 

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