Our customer Alcoa is present worldwide in the aluminum production and handling branches and has its headquarters in America. Alcoa has now expanded into Russia. They have a total of 87.000 employees in 34 countries and were named as one of the most environmentally friendly companies in the world at the world economic summit in Davos, Switzerland. In October, SGS as the only foreign installation company, received the contract for a 305 meter long painting line over a renowned Russian installation company.

This was the first project that our daughter company in Samara has successfully completed. A large challenge for SGS was the importing of the pipe and cable material. The customs clearing in Russia proved to be more challenging than expected. In addition, our Austrian installation crew had to get acclimated to the extreme Russian weather conditions and cultural differences in a very short time. The very tight schedule was to be kept in spite of these difficulties. All of these obstacles were able to be professionally managed and the plant was able to be finished on time and to the customers fullest satisfaction.

The equipment was delivered by the German companies of BWG, VITS, Eisenmann, Langbein & Engelbracht. Aside from the mechanical installation the project also consisted of the electrical installation as well as the hydraulic and pneumatic piping. The main installation groups were made up, next to the actual finishing, of the belt cleaning as well as the mechanical and electrical installation of an aluminum belt finishing (Eisenmann), a drying furnace (VITS) and a regenerative thermal reburning plant (Langbein & Engelbracht). This gave a total weight of all parts of some 1.700 tons. 62 kilometers of cable were laid in the electrical installation. At peak times we had 60 employees on site. The team consisted of Austrian, Czech Republic, Hungarian and Russian personnel. With the dynamic support of our daughter company in Samara, the project was able to be completed in the middle of 2008.

The aluminum paint line is the most modern and fastest in the world.