R&D team Overview of our Group

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Focus

Global leadership through innovation

Being a leader means knowing how to innovate. Our forward-looking R&D team knows how to push our boundaries to find ways to make next-generation cables that are lighter, tougher, and greener.

We use our market leadership, tap our vast research knowledge and experience, and leverage our extensive network of partners and universities to deliver energy and telecommunication innovations that make a difference to our customers’ bottom lines.

The R&D mission

Our mission is to focus on quality and know-how to identify innovative and efficient solutions and technologies in order to create new products and services that put us ahead of our competitors. We work to reduce production costs for both existing and new products, to lower environmental impact, and to add value for customers.

Our Research & Development team’s mission is to facilitate the development and continual improvement of cabled infrastructures for the transportation of power and information that enable our customers to achieve their energy transition goals. We strive to make longer and more efficient submarine cables that can be laid at greater depth; optical fibre solutions that can pack the largest number of cables into the tightest space; and ever-more powerful underground cables to transport energy for longer distances. Prysmian Group was the first in the industry to qualify both 525 kV XLPE and P Laser solutions for underground cables and has developed the first high-depth submarine cable with synthetic armour.

We are transforming the optical fibre landscape with the super-high density FlexRibbon, and the 180 μm Fiber Nano cable.

A Business Model balanced by segment and geographical area

The diversified portfolio of activities is a strength for the Prysmian Group, as the only global leader with a business model balanced among areas with differing profiles, where each segment plays a precise role in the overall strategy, considering stability, growth potential and the generation of opportunities.

While the positioning of the Prysmian Group as a cable manufacturer remains central, part of our activities makes us a network solution provider, drawing on the ability to integrate ever more closely the various components - engineering, installation, network monitoring and after-sales services - to provide value-added services that ensure recurring revenue streams and build long-term partnerships with customers.

Alongside this, the Group is also able to identify and develop value-added market niches – such as solutions for the elevator industry, cables for multimedia applications, monitoring solutions developed by Prysmian Electronics – while releasing the synergies needed to be cost-effective and offer end-to-end solutions integrated with advanced digital equipment.

Group R&D is responsible for the overall innovation strategy, aimed at making Prysmian Group a key player in the value chain supporting Energy Transition, Digitalization and Sustainability.

Local R&D centres participate actively in new product development, the Design-to-Cost (DTC) program and the rationalisation of product families. The Design-to-Cost program represents a tangible initial example of this model.

Using the best materials, adopting efficient processes and implementing innovative projects, this program has achieved in 2021 cost savings totalling more than Euro 42 million, with more than 1,800 projects completed at our manufacturing plants.

Innovation

Our DTC methodology

We have continued to focus on new solutions to optimize costs via the Design to Cost (DTC) program, using better materials, efficient processes and innovative designs. This program has achieved in 2020 cost savings totalling more than Euro 42 million, with more than 1,800 projects completed at our manufacturing plants. These projects deliver improve productivity and lower materials consumption resulting in a lower environmental impact from our products.

Investing in R&D

Prysmian Group's spending on Research, Development and Innovation was approximately Euro 107 million in 2021, confirming its steadfast commitment to and focus on sustainable long-term growth. The company’s investments include developing new products and solutions using fibre-sensing electronics, sensors, artificial intelligence and robotics.

The merger between Prysmian and General Cable, in 2018, has created a R&D powerhouse. We are investing in digital tools that enable efficient collaboration across our worldwide R&D community giving it ready electronic access to critical know- how, be it on our materials, designs or through technical experts.

Our goal is to be the most efficient we can in ‘connecting the dots’ to serve our customers and protect the environment.

Focusing on high technology projects

Our engineers are passionate about what they do, whether it is developing a more sustainable material, adding more transmission capacity to a cable, or improving a production process in one of our 108 factories.

The R&D team has a patent portfolio of more than 5,600 key innovations, which not only represent technological advantages but also have a lower environmental impact than the solutions they replaced.

Here is just a selection of the breakthroughs that we have brought to the global market over the past few years:

P-Laser 600 kV HVDC cable system is the most powerful cable solution for power transmission grids, allowing for a cost reduction of up to 30% per transmitted MW. The cable insulation is a Prysmian Group’s patented High HPTE (High Performance Thermoplastic Elastomer), which makes the cable recyclable.

66 kV cable systems for offshore wind farms are capable of delivering up to 15% cost reduction by raising the inter-array voltage level to 66 kV from previous 33 kV. This allows for the interconnection of the increasingly larger turbines now being deployed in the industry, in order to improve power transmission efficiency.

Hybrid cables are able to bring both power and ultra-broadband voice/data connection into homes, either side by side in a flat pack or together in a single tube, combining electrical and fibre optics cables. They are custom designed to meet a customer’s specific requirement.

Bend-resistant BendBright^XS optical fibres drastically reduce the size of cable diameters, shrinking the size and cutting the weight of cables in ducts and overhead. They make installation faster and more cost-effective. They minimize losses linked to macro and micro bending and increase a network’s lifespan.

The Flextube fibre optic cable range has been enlarged to reach a capacity of up to 2,112 fibres – the highest fibre-count cable to date. Installing such a high fibre count in a single job delivers significant cost and efficiency advantages.

Prysmian Electronics suite of electronics-based products have revolutionized the world of condition assessment and asset monitoring of power grids, electrical systems and equipment. These include PRY-CAM PORTABLE and PRY-CAM SYSTEM and allow performing online measurement and data gathering of key parameters without service interruption, with a database that hosts more than six million measurements on a dedicated cloud platform.

Alesea is a digitalised cable inventory management solution that uses IoT for real-time access to information. Attached to a drum and connected to the cloud, users can stay a step ahead of stock management and avoid unplanned shortages on their worksite.

PG Connect is a digital tool that combines a state-of-the-art head-mounted camera system and a cloud-based extended collaboration software, connecting on-field operators to internal and external experts to carry out both problem-shooting and routine maintenance.

Kablee is a digital platform that helps Prysmian Group enter geographical areas where it is not present. It provides services that make Prysmian Group’s offerings more sustainable, like connectivity for rural areas, and reselling of unused and also scrapped cables.

Prysmian Group’s PRYSUN solar PV cable portfolio consists of a full range of quality solar photovoltaic products, renowned in the field for their easy installation, reliability and longevity attributes and complying with all major international standards.

FlexRibbon Prysmian Group’s FlexRibbon™ Technology bundles the maximum number of fibres within the smallest possible cable, for maximum fibre density and duct space utilisation. This makes it possible for data centres and access networks to not only optimise expensive and limited duct space, but also significantly reduce cable footprint in their infrastructures.

Sirocco^HD microduct optical cables Sirocco^HD is a new range of cables that stems from Prysmian Group’s development of a new range of micro blowable cables with “Pico” tubes. The new tube technology, combined with the use of 200 µm optical fibres enables loose tubes to be made smaller, resulting in significantly lower cable diameters and the introduction on the market of Sirocco^HD. The use of Sirocco^HD provides reductions in the volume of plastics used by approximately 50%.

Overview