GLASGOW-based steel supplier EEW Energy Services has landed a £4.5 million deal to supply a major pipeline project at the Humber Refinery, North Lincolnshire.

And chief executive Michael Craig has signalled his confidence of securing further contracts in the UK's renewable and oil and gas sectors.

EEW will supply 2,300 metric tonnes of concrete coated linepipe for the Tetney Sealine Replacement project in the Humber estuary.

The pipeline links to the Humber Refinery, which processes crude oil into products such as sulphur petrol, diesel, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), heating oil and industrial feedstocks.

EEW, backed by Germany's EEW Group, will manufacture the pipe at the steel giant's plant at Erndtebrueck, south of Dortmund. It will then be shipped to Holland for coating before being transported to the UK for final installation.

Mr Craig, formerly of energy sector steel specialist Edgen Murray, said: "This is a significant win for us and a further endorsement in our capability to deliver complex solutions to the market as we move into our first full year of trading.

"The Tetney Sealine Replacement project is hugely significant for the energy sector. It will allow the Humber Refinery to continue the supply of North Sea crude oil imports and product exports to European and world markets."

The deal caps a satisfactory first year of trading for EEW, set up by Singapore-based Craig and chief financial officer Alan Hyslop a year ago.

Early business secured by the firm included a £1 million deal with Belfast-based Harland and Wolff to supply steel to the Humber Gateway Substation Project, a wind farm off the Yorkshire coast. It also won a £1.6 million contract to supply steel to an energy project in offshore Indonesia.

Mr Craig, who set up Murray International Metals' steel business in Singapore in 1992, said the prospects for suppliers to the offshore and renewable sectors in the UK look bright.

"The bid pipeline is incredibly strong as well, to the degree that we are looking to our headcount as well," he said. "That will help bolster up the commercial side as well.

"There is a lot of stuff going on in the energy sector just now."

Noting the depressed price of LPG in Asia and Australia, Mr Craig added: "The price of oil is at a historic low, so oil companies are looking at their cap ex (capital expenditure) and what they are doing. But there are still significant amounts of work going into the North Sea.

"If I compare it to Asia at the moment ... it was pretty much ground to a halt here."

EEW employs 10 staff at its base in Port Dundas, Glasgow.

It sources steel from EEW Group's network of steel mills across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, which globally represents 600,000 tonnes of capacity.

Mr Craig said its workload is split evenly between supplying energy projects in the UK and Asia, though noted a quirk of the industry that the steel it is supplying to Enquest for its operations in the North Sea's Kraken field was being fabricated in Singapore.

Mr Craig, whose firm invested £6 million to establish the Glasgow operation, said start-up costs and the process involved in getting on to approved supplier lists meant it was some way into its first year before it began earning revenue.

But he detects the business is beginning to "get the momentum we knew would come."

Mr Craig said: "We've had a good solid first quarter (and) our backlog is good going into the second quarter (to the second financial year).

"We've got a bit more confidence that we can take it forward."