Oil and gas services company Safehouse Habitats, which mitigates the dangers of working in explosive or flammable environments, is to open its first office in Asia, in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. The company is pursuing an aggressive overseas expansion, and the KL office will also serve as a base to manage the firm's growing operations in Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines.

The Dundee-based firm, whose 11 per cent growth in turnover last year to £19.2 million helped it to top the Business Insider SME 300 league table now has outposts in what it calls the "five key energy hubs": UK/Europe, Malaysia, UAE, Australia and the US. As well as a Southeast Asian sub-office due to open in December, the firm is now seeking premises in Houston, Texas.

Founded by Mike Garty and Graham Watters in 2001, the firm designs and supplies engineered enclosures to allow high risk activities such as welding to take place around hazardous oil and gas working areas.

The expansion comes a year after private equity firms Simmons Private Equity and First Reserve Momentum took control of the firm, tasking chief executive Gordon Mackay with leading an ambitious international growth strategy

Mackay said: “Under the previous owner-proprietor model Safehouse grew from humble beginnings to a good sized SME in around 10 years. Current investors recognised the opportunity to build on this success and will take the company to the next level, a goal we’ve been working towards since we took the reins about a year ago."

“It’s been an incredible first year for me at Safehouse. We’ve restructured the business and made some key appointments so we’re now in a good place to grow internationally. We established our presence in Abu Dhabi last year and we’re working on a number of strategic partnerships that will see Safehouse become a globally recognised safety brand.”

Claiming to offer the world's only fully certified "hot work habitat" the company has stated its ambition to "maintain our position as the global market leader in safe hot work solutions for hazardous environments".

Traditionally "hot work" was deemed too big a risk or too likely to cause serious interruption to other activity, plants or installations would commonly shut-down before hot work could be carried out, a problem that Safehouse's services offered to solve.