10
Prysmian Group Insight
DOING BUSINESS
Prysmian to improve
fibre production competitiveness
Prysmian Group announced it is investing
€
50
million in a major effort aimed at improving the
competitiveness of its fibre optic production facilities.
The plan involves Prysmian fibre facilities around the
globe, from Brazil to the US, and from France to the
Netherlands. The capital-spending program is not really
aimed at increasing capacity, but rather at improving
the competitiveness of the Group’s plants. A relevant
portion of the capital spending, some
€
20 million, will
be channeled into the facility of Battipaglia, Southern
Italy, which will stay as the Group’s centre of excellence
and will focus in the development of the state-of-the-art
production lines.
The challenge Prysmian is facing is that of keeping up
with the competition of manufacturers in emerging
countries, who benefit from lower energy costs and
wages. Thanks to the acquisition of Draka, Prysmian
became the second largest fibre optic manufacturer
worldwide with a global market share of 15%. But
producers from Asia are increasing their efforts: Chinese
manufacturers are focused on the domestic market,
which alone accounts for 50% of the global fibre demand,
for the time being, but could start looking west as soon
as the country’s fibre appetite becomes exhausted.
In response to this challenge, Prysmian’s new
investment programme aims to further strengthen
the leading position of its centres of excellence
and production sites around the world, in terms of
competitiveness as well. Its wide range of optical fibres
is designed and made to cater to the broadest possible
spectrum of customer applications, such as single-
mode, multimode and specialty fibres. The Group also
boasts the widest availability to the market of every
current technology for the manufacture of optical fibre
and can achieve optimal solutions for many different
applications.
Prysmian Group is extremely active in the most rapidly
growing sector of the market, known as FTTx, where its
approach is based on combining existing technologies
with innovative, new solutions allowing fibres to be
deployed in high-rise buildings and multi-dwelling
units. Many of the cables used in FTTx systems feature
Prysmian's bend-insensitive
optical fibre,
which has been specially developed for this application.
The portfolio also includes Prysmian’s
end-to-end integrated solution for cost-effective FTTH
networks, which is a complete solution that significantly
reduces the cost of home connection of FTTH
deployments.
Prysmian Group has opened
for the
production of optical fibre cable in Slatina, Romania,
which has become one of the centres of excellence in
Europe for the optical communications cables industry.
The factory boasts a significant number of Quality
Certifications such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, IMQ, and
the new plant will triple its production, from 500,000km
up to 1.5 millionkm of cables per year, with the potential
of reaching 3 million.
The investment in the new facility in Slatina is part
of a major plan to further reinforce the Group’s
competitiveness in the fast-changing telecoms market,
where Prysmian is continuously investing in order to
offer innovative technological solutions.
The Slatina plant stretches across almost 100,000m
2
,
with a covered area of around 42,000m
2
, and will create
a total yearly production capacity of 30,000 tons of
energy cables (from High Voltage cables up to 110kV and
building wires, to Power and Instrumentation & Control
cables), almost 1,500,000km of optical cables and
500,000km of copper telecom cables (covering almost all
possible demand for both optical fibre and copper telecom
cables types), while employing over 400 people.
New optical plant in Romania
Two important orders in the US
and Spain
The Group Submarine cable business gained two
relevant orders in the US and Spain. The first was
a new contract worth more than $100 million for
the supply and installation of submarine cables
ent
of approximately 50km of cables with increased
capacity of 40kV EPR manufactured at Drammen
in Norway. In Spain, the Transmission System
Operator awarded Prysmian a
€
80 million contract
Ibiza.
