TAM International - Strategies, Solutions and Best Practices for Business Leaders

Sometimes being successful in business simply comes down to how well you can relate to your customer. TAM International operates its business much like its customers run their own, thus allowing the company to maintain its niche in the oil and gas industry, according to Vice President Jack Newberry. TAM International is a leader in inflatable packers, swellable packers, and downhole products and services to the oil and gas industry. TAM maintains a unique customer base from small independents to the super majors worldwide.

“Our customers have people wearing a lot of different hats in those operations, and they have to concern themselves with the same things we do, such as efficiencies and the economics of their drilling and production operations,” Newberry maintains.

The 42-year-old independent oilfield services company is headquartered in Houston and has regional offices in Calgary, Canada; Aberdeen, Scotland; and Perth, Australia. TAM products are available worldwide from offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia Pacific and Africa. “Our overall goal here is to exceed the requirements of our customers and the industry in the manufacture and installation of inflatable and swellable packers,” Newberry explains.

“Our growth has been organic, and we plan to continue to grow that way. We continue to open new locations all over the world, with our two most recent openings in Colombia and Mexico.”

Growth Path
One of the biggest impacts on company growth occurred in 2004 when TAM expanded its portfolio to include swellable packers, taking the business in new directions and garnering substantial revenue growth, Newberry says. “In the last five years, we came out with our swellable packers and have had significant growth in that product line,” he notes. “More activity in the multizone fracturing field has helped with that growth, although that is just one application.

“We went through two years of research and development on the swellable packers and we identified the geographic areas that we wanted to pursue,” Newberry continues. “Once we started expanding, it got really customer driven at that point. We had clients come to us with applications, and we thought it would be advantageous if we helped them fit the scope of their application.”

New inflatable packer technologies have helped grow the product line for TAM, Newberry adds. “Rigs are moving into deeper water and coming into contact with higher temperatures and higher pressures,” he explains. “It has become a challenge from the engineering and operations standpoint, but for some of the deep-water applications, we have been able to develop some tools for big casing applications in the Gulf of Mexico and in other offshore areas around the world. We have developed test tools for up to 30-inch casing.”

Globalization has helped TAM maintain steady work flow, especially during the recession. “Things slowed worldwide, but we saw more of an impact in North America,” Newberry explains. “Now, commodity prices are improving and we see an increase in rig activity. As a result, our backlog has tripled since July 2009.

“We have streamlined our manufacturing process and we are going through a continuous improvement process to take advantage of meeting some of our short-term delivery goals to keep us ahead of some of our global competitors,” he notes.

Research and Development
Its research and development department assists TAM in developing products based on trends in the marketplace and customer demand. In the past year, the company’s efforts to fund R&D have doubled to take advantage of the downturn in the market. “We are able to commit more engineering to a product, especially those requests from customer who have a need for something that isn’t presently available,” Newberry notes. “R&D is a joint effort between sales, engineering and manufacturing.”

In September 2009, TAM introduced the FREECAP GT swellable packer for steam injection, open-hole geothermal and hot wells. The FREECAP GT water-swellable elastomer swells in wells with downhole temperatures up to 575 F and pressure differentials of more than 2,000 psi. The packer was developed specifically to meet the annular isolation needs of operators who use steam injection for heavy oil recovery.