Finland: Prysmian Inaugurates New Submarine Cable Plant

Finland: Prysmian Inaugurates New Submarine Cable Plant

Prysmian Group, world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry, inaugurates its new submarine cable plant in Finland, having invested approximately €40 million to increase its production capacity at the Pikkala facility, already one of the Group’s centres of excellence for high voltage cable production. In particular, the Pikkala plant has started up production of transmission cables that use HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) technology allowing large amounts of energy to be transmitted over long distances.

“The realisation of major renewable energy development projects in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, also involves developing suitable new power transmission connections, especially for offshore wind farms,” explains Marcello Del Brenna, CEO of Prysmian PowerLink. “Prysmian is world leader in this field and in order to support the demands of this growing industry it is engaged in a major investment programme to expand production capacity and maintain its technological leadership”.

In addition to the investment of some €40 million in Finland, the Group is also involved in expanding production capacity at its Arco Felice plant in Italy, the Group’s centre of excellence for submarine cables, following acquisition of the Western Link order worth around €800 million to build a new submarine link between Scotland and England.

In addition, the integration between Prysmian and Draka has further broadened the range of products and services offered also in the field of renewable energy. The Group can now utilise three production facilities dedicated to submarine cables: Arco Felice (near Naples) in Italy, Pikkala in Finland and Drammen in Norway. With this extended production footprint, Prysmian Group is able to present itself to the market as a reference partner for linking mainland grids to individual offshore wind turbine towers, with an offer ranging from medium voltage inter-array cables, to HVAC and HVDC export cables up to 320 kV.

Within its portfolio, Prysmian Group has an ever increasing track record of important offshore wind power connections, with projects either completed or on-going in Denmark, Holland and the UK as well as the HVDC connections to shore for the BorWin2, HelWin1, HelWin2 and SylWin1 mega wind farm hubs in Germany, forming part of the most important programme for the development of renewable energy in Europe.

Prysmian Group is world leader in the energy and telecom cables and systems industry. With sales of some €8 billion in 2011, 22,000 employees across 50 countries and 97 plants, the Group is strongly positioned in high-tech markets and provides the widest range of products, services, technologies and know-how. In the Energy sector, Prysmian Group operates in the business of underground and submarine power transmission cables and systems, special cables for applications in many different industrial sectors and medium and low voltage cables for the construction and infrastructure industry. In the Telecom sector, the Group manufactures cables and accessories for the voice, video and data transmission industry, offering a complete range of optical fibres, optical and copper cables and connectivity systems. Prysmian is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange in the Blue Chip index.

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Subsea World News Staff, June 06, 2012