Specialist flooring company Flowcrete has clinched an pounds8 million contract with a state-of-the-art skyscraper development in Dubai.

The Sandbach-based firm is to install more than one million square feet of car parks at the luxurious Jumeirah Lake Towers development - an apartment complex made up of 72 blocks of 27- storey towers.

Bosses at the company, which employs 360 people worldwide and 65 at its UK headquarters in Sandbach, says business in the Middle East has tripled in the last year thanks to rising oil prices and the construction boom in the region.

Managing director Mark Greaves said: "For the Jumeirah project, each tower has its own car park on the bottom three layers and we're doing all 72 towers. It will take about two years to complete."

"Our office in Dubai has grown from three to seven people in the last year, and the business has tripled in the last 12 months.

"We're also looking to open offices in locations like Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Kuwait to try to expand throughout the rest of the region.

"We're suffering here because of oil prices but all that extra revenue is going into the Middle East, so they've got a lot of money to spend."

As well as the Middle East, Flowcrete is expanding into Europe. The firm has just opened a new office in Bucharest, Romania, to tap into an increasing number of construction projects. Bosses want to take advantage of Romania's new status as a member of the European Union, which means it is due to benefit from grants to improve its infrastructure.

Mr Greaves said: "It's an area of fast growth.

"There's been a lot of investment in the factories because they've had a lot of EU grants to upgrade their facilities to EU standard, particularly in the food and pharmaceutical sectors where our anti-microbial floors can be used."

In addition, Flowcrete's Polish office, in Warsaw, has been upgraded to include a distribution centre to serve Eastern Europe. The firm also has a presence in Estonia and the Ukraine.

Mr Greaves says he hopes Flowcrete's expanding presence in the region will help the firm target Russia, which they see as a key future market.

He said: "We're going to be targeting Russia next year. We've had an office in Warsaw for a while."

Mr Greaves's wife, Dawn Gibbins, Flowcrete's former owner, sold the business earlier this year for an undisclosed sum to US giant RPM International.

The firm now has 30 offices worldwide as well as manufacturing plants in the UK, US, Malaysia, South Africa, Sweden and Belgium.

Mr Greaves said the economic slowdown has not yet hit the company hard, but he is expecting to feel the impact over the coming months.

He said: "I think the slowdown will last a year to maybe 18 months but then I think it will pick up, I really do."

Has your company won a big contract? Email us at businessdesk@thesentinel.co.uk

(c) 2008 Sentinel, The (Stoke-on-Trent UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Story Source: Sentinel, The (Stoke-on-Trent UK)