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In mid-August Max Bögl Wind AG began shipping the first mobile factory for hybrid towers to South East Asia. The hybrid towers will be built on-site in Thailand and are expected to be the tallest in Asia.
Promoting the worldwide energy revolution, advancing renewable energy technologies and creating added value at the local level – these were the ideas behind the development of a mobile manufacturing plant. Every day since the middle of August, ten containers have been shipped from the Max Bögl company site in Sengenthal, Bavaria, to Nuremberg and then on to Rotterdam for a 17,000 kilometer journey to Huai Bong, a village about 260 kilometers northeast of Bangkok. The world’s first mobile manufacturing plant for hybrid tower systems will be constructed there by February 2018. Max Bögl AG intends to build 90 hybrid towers for the Korat Wind Farm in the Thepharak District using local resources and labor, but with the same high quality produced in its main factory in Sengenthal.
“To better meet the global demand for wind turbine systems with hub heights between 130 and 180 meters, we developed the concept of a mobile production facility,” says Josef Knitl, Board Member of Bögl Wind AG, regarding the innovation. Wind farms in Europe are supplied with hybrid tower systems from production plants in Sengenthal and Osterrönfeld. For international customers, however, the company chose a different strategy: build a mobile manufacturing plant at the wind turbine site itself and use it to produce concrete elements with local materials and labor. This creates added value on site, reduces the cost of material purchases and places significantly less strain on infrastructure compared to heavy transports. The high quality standards for factory manufacturing are maintained in the mobile factory since the equipment and processes from seven years of experience in producing concrete segments remain largely the same and only needed to be adapted for the new precast concrete sizes. The CNC-machined concrete segments are smaller in the mobile manufacturing plant. Max Bögl has thus found a way to offer its hybrid tower systems throughout the world while maintaining the high quality standards it is known for.
Logistical masterpiece
A great deal of preparation was needed in order to ship a complete hybrid tower manufacturing plant around the world in containers. “It quickly became clear to us that a stationary manufacturing plant could not simply be packed up and shipped off. We needed to find a logistical solution for each individual part,” explains Matthias Karasch, a civil engineer at Max Bögl Wind AG. A total of 262 containers loaded with approximately 3,500 tons of materials are to be shipped to Thailand by mid-November 2017. Once they arrive at the site, the individual parts will be assembled together to form a mobile manufacturing plant. Around 25 employees from Sengenthal will be on hand to run the plant, while the remaining workers will be hired locally.
About Max Bögl Wind AG
Using renewable energies more efficiently and forwarding the energy revolution. This is the principle behind Max Bögl Wind AG with its innovative technology solutions. The company is the market leader in Germany for manufacturing, delivery and erection of hybrid towers for hub heights of 130 meters and above, and holds the record for the highest wind turbine tower with a hub height of 164 meters. Max Bögl Wind AG is also setting new innovative standards in the energy storage industry. With the water battery, an entirely new type of flexible and small pumped-storage power plant has been developed which for the first time combines renewable energies with large-scale storage facilities. Max Bögl Wind AG is an affiliate company of Max Bögl. The corporate group from Sengenthal near Neumarkt in Bavaria is one of the top ten largest German companies in the construction industry, and has been operating in the wind sector since 2010. Founded in 1929, the family-owned company with around 6,000 employees worldwide has an annual turnover of over 1.6 billion euros.
Press pictures
Loading materials on a train at the freight depot in Nuremberg.
Loading a truck for transport to the freight depot in Nuremberg.
Source: Max Bögl Wind AG, Photographer: Reinhard Mederer
Media contact:
Nancy Fürst
Marketing Wind
Max Bögl Wind AG
Postfach 11 20
D-92301 Neumarkt (Germany)
Tel. +49 9181 909 14698
nfuerst@max-boegl.de
Philippe Ruß
PR consultant
PR-Agentur Solar Consulting GmbH
Emmy-Noether-Straße 2
D-79110 Freiburg (Germany)
Tel. +49 761 38 09 68-21
russ@solar-consulting.de[:]