Projects

Philippe Vanhille, Executive Vice President, Telecom, Prysmian Group

Philippe Vanhille, Executive Vice President, Telecom, Prysmian Group

Prysmian: continuous investments sustain global broadband development

As part of a five-year plan ending in 2016, Prysmian is investing over €100m in optical fibre, explains Philippe Vanhille, Prysmian Group.

“The aim of the investment is to improve efficiency, provide better value to customers, increase competitiveness of fibre products and enhance production capacity to meet market demand,” says Philippe.

 

“Fast growing data consumption is driving the market towards more fibre volume. The role of a leader such as Prysmian is, of course, to provide the requested volume. However, we must do this without compromising on quality and innovation, whilst permanently improving our fibre costing. Our investment plan is a key enabler for achieving these combined targets. We pay particular attention to optimization of our fibre manufacturing processes, realized through, for example, higher production yields and larger preforms.”

Five worldwide excellence centres for fibre

 

Fibre factories in Douvrin (France), Battipaglia (Italy), Eindhoven (Netherlands), Claremont (USA) and Sorocaba (Brazil), as well as our joint ventures, have been set up to leverage the total production available within the group and to cover the world’s requirement for single- and multimode cabling. “These centres can be considered a globally distributed ‘virtual’ fibre factory, with products transiting from one factory to another at several process steps in line with local constraints and market needs. This global and vertical fibre manufacturing platform supplies the core raw material to our 17 optical fibre cable plants on five continents, soon to be joined by the new facility in Durango (Mexico).”

 

In Brazil, despite unfavourable economic conditions, Prysmian Group maintains its commitment to innovation and competition in the optical fibre sector with the inauguration of its newly expanded optical fibre production facility in Sorocaba, São Paulo. This is part of an ongoing global scheme that will improve the performance of the Group’s optical products and manufacturing processes, along with other excellence centres. Phase one of the investment plan for the Soracaba plant – now completed – increases local production capacity. The second, current phase of the plan aims to upgrade manufacturing processes.

In central America, phase one of the facility in Durango will be accomplished in 2016 with a production capacity of 1million km/year. Phase 2 will be completed in 2017 bringing the total to 2 million km/year.

Quality is key

 

“The quality of the passive elements of an optical infrastructure is absolutely key to guarantee the sustainability of the telecom service and also to optimize the total cost of ownership of the network,” Philippe adds. “The closer the fibre gets to the premises, the more passive components quality becomes critical to avoid service disruptions and high cost of ownership. We consistently keep on investing in optical innovation, in order to permanently improve the performance of our products and processes. Our mission is to provide the market with the best solutions, creating concrete value for our customers.”