Oil and gas engineering services specialist Plexus Holdings is looking for a potential big company partner to license its patented POS-GRIP pipeline wellhead and connector technology, after turning a £100,000 loss into pre-tax profits of £1.5 million in the year to June.

Headed by founder and industry veteran Ben van Bilderbeek, the company, which increased turnover 52 per cent to £10.3 million, draws most revenues by renting equipment designed to enhance efficiency, safety and cost effectiveness for high-pressure and high-temperature exploration and production wells around the world.

Plexus, whose customers include Shell, ExxonMobil, Conoco Phillips and BG, also provides equipment manufactured by third parties. The company, which is working on a £6.5 million BP contract at Shah Deniz in the Caspian Sea, recently clinched a £700,000 North Sea deal with Gaz de France, but believes licensing deals, perhaps with major service companies for which POS-GRIP could add a useful selling point, could be the best way to win business with big energy groups on favourable terms.

Plexus is understood to have received one or two informal expressions of interest and argues POS-GRIP has useful applications outside wellheads. Floated at 59p in 2005, the shares hit 104p in early 2006 before falling to 35.5p last May, and at 60.5p could repay a flutter.

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Plexus	AIM	£31.27m	39.00p	0.00p
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