Glass Service Srl, operating in the headquarters and workshops of San Miniato (Pisa, Italy) has recently reinforced its active presence in the African market with a contract for the supply of a container glass plant in Ethiopia. The customer is Goda Bottles and Glass, located in the Tigray Region, near the City of Adigrat.
The contract was signed after long technical and commercial discussion with the customer, and came in operation one year ago, with the beginning of the engineering phases.
The target is the production of container glass, amber, green and flint, for a capacity of 90 tonnes per day.
Glass Service is the turn key supplier of the technological parts of the line: the batch plant, the regenerative furnace, complete of all refractories, steelworks and ancillaries are directly produced by Glass Service, that is integrating into the general supply, the forming machine (Bottero), the inspection machine (Heye) and the cold end.
A very important part of the supply was the design and manufacturing of the electrical distribution system of the whole plant, including the connection with the National Grid, the transformers to low voltage, all the low voltage distribution systems, as well as the diesel generators and the relevant controls and interfaces with the low voltage distribution cabinet.
The supply was recently implemented with the further contract for the main technological cables.
In the past weeks, the delivery of all equipment, refractories and ancillaries was completed: hundreds of trucks left the Glass Service workshops to the Italian ports, and from there, the Ethiopian Shipping Line took care of the transportation to destination.
It is extremely important to stress the fact that Glass Service Srl, mainly dedicated to the production of furnaces, batch plants, forehearths and relevant equipment, has further extended its activity by the acquisition of this turn key project.
Now they have the skill to provide the full engineering of the production workshop, from the batch plant to the cold end, as well as the full engineering and design of the compressed air, water and electrical distribution circuits.
All the communication with the customer are managed by a dedicated team leader, supported by an highly qualified team of engineers.
An important part of this turn key project is related to the financial and administrative activity. The management department has taken care of all the financial aspects of the project, as the management of the letter of credits, the relevant guarantees, the relations with the forwarders and the shipping procedures related to the delivery of more than 150 containers.
This project will have several positive aspects:
- The incrementation of the capacity of Ethiopia to be an important actor in the African Glass Market
- The incrementation of the solid, positive and friendly relationships between Ethiopia and Italy
- The confirmation that Glass Service Srl can be a global supplier, not only of furnaces, batch plants and equipment, but also of complete turn key projects.
A key point was the financial and technical flexibility, necessary to face continuous changes and modifications that happened during the project development. Every time, a Glass Service team was present to manage all the complexities related to the turn key supplies.