THE Mivan Group has worked on contracts as diverse as Saddam Hussein's palace, the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem, Euro Disney and the QE2. At present it is engaged on a contract to build a complete town for the Royal Thai airforce. In the 20 years since it was set up, the Mivan Group has developed into a company employing more than 3,000 people in 19 countries, with a projected turnover for 1996 of £120 million.
Mivan was founded in 1975 by Mr Ivan McCabrey while he was still an engineering student at Queen's University. It now has seven operating divisions, from window fabrication to ship outfitting, and is among the 20 most profitable export, construction companies in Britain.
Mivan was the largest contractor on the Euro Disney project, where it built two Mississippi paddle steamers and Big Thunder Mountain, believed to be the world's largest construction in artificial rockwork.
The company has operated in the Middle East for over 10 years. It finished work on a palace for the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein just before the outbreak of the Gulf War. Last year, it completed the contract to refurbish the seventh century Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem.
This involved the complete restoration of the roof of the shrine, and the covering of the 1,500 sq mtr dome with pure gold.
Mivan was the first contractor appointed to assist in the regeneration of the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal, and a 232 bed hospital in the area is due to be finished this summer.
It has an expanding business in the Asia Pacific region, particularly in Thailand, which last year accounted for 40 per cent of turnover.
The £77 million contract to build an entire town for the Royal Thai airforce, includes 2,000 apartments, infrastructure, and temples, as well as leisure and social facilities. The project, which is scheduled for completion next year, will employ around 1,200 workers, supervised by 30 specialist managers and engineers from Northern Ireland.
In 1985, Mivan developed the "Mascon" construction system. It involves using prefabricated lightweight aluminium panels, and is designed for high volume mass housing in countries where the climate is warm enough to allow the construction of buildings with single skin walls.
The panels are engineered at Mivan's Antrim plant and at a factory in Malaysia, and assembled on site by unskilled labour. According to Mr McCabrey, the only tool required in the assembly process is a hammer. Mivan has used this technique on contracts in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Iraq, Thailand, and the Seychelles.
The company's first contract, the Mont Kiara apartment complex in Kuala Lumpur, set a world record for high rise reinforced concrete construction. It involved five buildings, each 30 storeys high, and was built at the rate of one floor every three days.
Mivan has 7,000 housing units' under construction in the Asia Pacific region; all are being built using the Mascon system.
Mivan's pre tax profit for 1995 is expected to be close to £5 million, on turnover of more than £680 million. The two largest divisions are Mivan Overseas, which accounted for more than £50 million of total sales, and Mivan Marine, the ship outfitting business, which had sales of £16.8 million.
Mivan Marine has developed into one of the world's leading ship outfitters. It has completed contracts on ferries and cruise ships for P&O, the Stena Line, the B & I Line, and Cunard.
Mr McCabrey says the cruise market is a highly competitive sector with strict deadlines, requiring a high level of capital investment. One of its recent purchases has been a high powered water jet capable of cutting through materials such as stainless steel and marble.
Mivan's Antrim factory also makes units for the company's shopfitting division, where its customers include River Island, Miss Selfridge, Virgin Megastores, and McDonalds.
Much of Mivan's future growth is likely to be in the Far East and on the Indian sub continent. The company took part in a recent trade mission to India organised by the Industrial Development Board, and Mr McCabrey believes that it is a market with huge potential.
One of his priorities is to make the company more cost efficient. That means reducing the percentage of turnover being spent on sales and marketing (Mivan spends around £1 million a year on air fares alone) in a bid to reduce overall costs by around 10 per cent over the next three years.
With huge potential in its main markets in the Far East, and an established reputation in its ship outfitting subsidiary, Mivan has developed into one of Northern Ireland's most successful companies. The outlook for the foreseeable future appears to indicate that it will be able reinforce that position over the coming years.
