Middle East orders are driving growth and filling newly built capacity at Sweden headquartered Atlas Copco’s newly upgraded and expanded UK systems facility.
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Atlas Copco Compressors’ largest ever UK designed and built custom engineered package, worth over £6 million to Kazakhstan, required the chartering of an Antonov 124, one of the world’s largest freight transporters. |
Atlas Copco has spent nearly £1 million upgrading the Systems Hemel Hempstead facility, in Hertfordshire, with some £680,000 (€870,000) of the investment spent on its engineering workshop, including more than doubling the floor space from 850sq m to 1950sq m.
The centre, one of Atlas Copco’s six global competence centres that design and assemble bespoke compressed air and nitrogen generation packages primarily for the oil and gas industry, was opened in 1972 when Atlas Copco UK moved its headquarters to Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, initially undertaking non-standard business in the UK power and energy sector.
It started taking orders from oil and gas operators internationally from 2008 and now supplies about 50% of its work to overseas, with staff growing from 20 in 2005 to 45 in 2015.
To meet demand, new offices and viewing areas have been created, new external covered test areas built, and two new 5-tonne cranes, trackways and controls added. The firm has also built new spray paint booths, a new grit blast facility and test equipment is now permanently installed. A new 1.5MW fin/fan water cooler has also been added to remove heat from water-cooled air compressors up to 1.5MW and a 1000kVA generator for 50 and 60Hz testing.
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Paul Frost manager, Systems Hemel Hempstead |
Paul Frost, manager of Systems Hemel Hempstead, says Systems Hemel Hempstead currently has a healthy order book worth around £30 million for delivery over a 12-15 month period, including two recent large orders for instrument air packages for the Middle East placed in December and January. Two large compressor packages for Shah Deniz and Mossmorran were due for delivery from the workshop by the end of February.
Frost explains: “Each project is different because customer requirements tend to be unique for the intended environment. We have recently supplied compressor packages which must operate in a range of temperatures from -400C to +450C in Russia and to an oil company in the Middle East where reliable operation at +550C is required to withstand regular sand storms.”
The majority of Systems Hemel Hempstead’s end products are modular ‘plug and play’ packaged solutions, custom built and shipped with all components, such as compressors, dryers, filters, air receivers, nitrogen generators, instrumentation and control systems, on a single base frame for integration with land-based or offshore process installations.
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