Saltel Industries

History & Objectives

Saltel-Industries was created in 2004 by Jean-Louis SALTEL, previously founder and President of Drillflex from 1993 to 2002. Drillflex developed the PatchFlex, an in-situ polymerized Patch for oil field remedial works, sold to Schlumberger in 2002.
His two sons, Benjamin and Nicolas joined the company respectively in 2004 and 2005. Benjamin, Mechanical Engineer, is the Research Coordinator. Nicolas, Manufacturing Master of Science, is the Production Manager. Yoann Riou, previously DrillflexOperation Engineer joined Saltel-Industries in 2004.
James Leighton, previously Drillflex Marketing Manager from 1994 to 2003 joined Saltel-Industries in 2009.

Saltel-Industries is a family owned company that initially worked to develop a range of high pressure, high temperature Inflatable Packers for formation evaluation.

Using innovative design and materials the company rapidly obtained remarkable levels of performance in terms of packer expansion ratio, temperature rating, pressure resistance and reliability.
So far, more than 1500 of these Inflatable Packers have been successfully set around the word.
In 2005 Saltel-Industry started to develop a new expandable technology using high pressure Inflatable Packers for expanding short lengths of tubular.

The high R&D Company profile, the innovation and the creative use of technology brought a new and simple solution for Expandable applications.The first Field Test operations were carried out for PDO in Oman in 2008, to isolate a zone of open hole and successfully cure total losses while drilling.

In the years 2008 and 2009 the development focused on the qualification and industrialization of the process from manufacturing to the setting in the well. Inflatable Packers, Down Hole Tool, Surface Equipment, and Soft Ware have been developed and qualified firstly in the Saltel-Industries test dummy well, then in real oilfield applications.


2010 saw the start of full scale commercialization of the Expandable Steel Patch.
Numerous Expandable Steel Patches from 3m to 66m in length have been set around the word in Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Saltel-Industries is continually developing new applications using this unique Expandable Technology, some in association with Swelling Elastomers.