One of our long-standing customers has a business involvement through a joint venture with a mine operator in Vietnam. The end of 2013 we were asked to make an offer for the delivery of various equipment and tanks for a new production facility in Vietnam. The objective was to process the ore on site instead of sending it half across the world.

The entire planning of the new production facility was carried out in Asia – supported by our customer’s Technical Department.

Most of the equipment in the old production facility had already been delivered many years ago and had proved itself. In December 2013 we received the order for a new production facility.

The old facility is rather complex because it has grown over the years and since not all of it had been documented, the owners were worried that it would be difficult to pass on the information required for planning to their Asian planner.

We quickly came up with the idea not to deliver individual components but modules complete with the piping already installed. After presenting a few drawings, we were able to convince the project engineers of the advantages of this approach. This also made it possible, for example, to test the essential functionalities of the modules with piping set up 1:1 in Brunswick, driven with water. In spite of delays in construction in Vietnam, time was won since the assembly of already piped and tested modules can be carried out much faster than setting up different equipment and then installing the piping.

Since the planning as well as the assembly of the pipe lines had already been contracted, the customer had to find a solution with the planner and assembly company first before they could give us the order.

With a volume of more than a million US dollars (practically all of it was executed in PVDF), this was the largest single order in the history of our company.

Planning was carried out entirely in 3D in order to find a solution for the somewhat difficult pipeline routing. Transfer points were relatively quickly determined with the customer and a “footprint” (surface area and height) for the facility was provided.

The modules were planned first, then the steel frames, the internal piping and, finally, the overriding piping. In view of the many pipelines in several modules, the large remaining space in the steel frames was quickly filled. For some of the modules it took a long time to find an appropriate arrangement for the connection pieces to meet the needs of the pipelines. This would have hardly been possible without 3D planning

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Production took place in the same order as planning and by the middle of 2014 the facility was filled with water and ready for acceptance. After acceptance it was dismantled and made ready for shipment. In total there were only 78 assembly sites which were marked on both sides with labels. The respective connection elements were placed in plastic bags and also labelled.

The entire production facility was packed in two parts in oversea containers and sent on its way to Vietnam. The components were very well protected by the steel frames and this also made bringing them into the building easier and safe.