News archive 2007

October 9, 2007

VAG delivers the first valves only 4 weeks later...

 

 

 

 

Mannheim, 6 September 2007

 

 

The mayor of Turkey’s capital Ankara, Melih Gökcek, visited VAG-Armaturen GmbH in Mannheim on 22 August 2007. The reason for his visit was to get an overview of the production status of the valves that had been ordered from VAG. These valves are needed for the construction of a pipeline which is to put an end to the water shortage in the Turkish metropolis of Ankara and to prevent the impending rationing of drinking water. The capital has been hit especially hard by the drought currently affecting the entire country, and the city’s water supply system, which has hardly been able to meet demand in the past few years, will definitely be unable to meet it this year. In the past few months, some residential parts of Ankara were cut off entirely from the water supply for up to 48 hours. The first section of the pipeline project in which VAG-Armaturen GmbH Mannheim plays a major part, is to be completed by the middle of October 2007. To achieve this challenging goal, the first heavy-duty valves were loaded on trucks and transported to Turkey over land as early as 26 September 2007.

 

The facts and figures of the Turkish pipeline project are impressive: Three pipelines are going to be routed over a length of 128 kilometres from a drinking water reservoir lake on the Kizilirmak River to Ankara. Two of these pipelines will be routed in parallel and each of them will have a diameter of 1.6 m. The diameter of the third pipeline will be 1.4 m. Water from these three pipelines will flow into a large collecting pipe with a diameter of 2.7 m which will eventually lead to Ankara’s drinking water tank. The pipelines are designed to supply 9,000 l of water per second.

 

Mannheim-based VAG-Armaturen GmbH develops and manufactures advanced valves and system solutions for drinking water supply and sewage water systems. In the pipeline project in Turkey, a whole range of VAG valves will be used. The VAG Plunger Valves will precisely adjust the pressure in the pipeline network and the flow rate. The VAG Non-Return Valves prevent the water from flowing back in case of a power failure and also protect the pumps in the pumping stations. A great number of VAG Butterfly Valves will be used to shut off individual pipeline sections.

 

It was already at the end of June that VAG was awarded the contract for the supply of control valves with a total volume of over € 3 m by “Ankara Beton”, a contractor based in Ankara, Turkey. To ensure that as early as 20 October 2007, Melih Gökcek’s birthday, water will be flowing through the first pipeline section of the project, a lot of efforts have to be made. Over 1,200 people are working on the project 24/7 on site to be able to ensure that the construction project can be completed on time. Many of the heavy-duty fittings supplied by VAG have to be taken to Turkey by air freight because of the time pressure.

 

“Due to the tight schedule, this contract was a real challenge for us which we are gladly facing. The order control section in our Customer Service Center and our process management jointly prepared a detailed schedule, and our production department implements the schedule exactly on time. This allows us to keep on schedule and to ensure that there are no obstacles to the project being completed on time,” says VAG’s Managing Director, Engineer Robert Fellner-Feldegg.

 

The Mannheim-based company with its long tradition has a production area of about 30,000 m² at its headquarters. The VAG Group employs about 900 people world-wide and around 220 work at the Mannheim plant.

 

The picture shows Ankara’s mayor, Melih Gökcek, together with the manager of VAG’s Customer Service Center, Hans-Günter Hieronimus, and Erwin Theiner, the regional export manager in charge of Turkey.

 

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