Pirelli To Build Specialist Cable Plant in Brazil

Pirelli has started work towards the construction of a special cable factory in the Brazilian State of Espirito Santo (Vila Velha). The “umbilicals” produced will be used in offshore oil platforms, the company says.

The new plant, due to be completed by 2006, will serve the sector’s most important markets and will produce umbilical cables both with thermoplastic and steel-tube technologies. The overall investment for Pirelli amounts to approximately 20 million euros.

Umbilical are special cables that connect the well heads at the bottom of the ocean to surface vessels and platforms. These cables carry out multifunctional activities, allowing the transmission of power and data (with fibre optic) to the well heads, as well as hydraulic fluids. All of these are combined to activate valves and pumping equipment to process the flow of oil.

“The new Brazilian factory will consolidate our industrial presence in Latin America, an area which has always been strategic for the Pirelli Group, even in the Energy Cables and Systems Sector, and will allow us to focus further on the high value added segment of special cables in the Oil and Gas. Such investment confirms our positioning in any highly technological segment of energy cables, through the excellence of our solutions,” said Valerio Battista, managing director of Pirelli Energy Cables and Systems.