“Uhde GmbH Contracts Contrans for High Profile Turn-Key Project in Finland”

Kilpilahti, Finland, June 24 2005 – When ThyssenKrupp Group subsidiary Uhde GmbH won a massive contract from Fortum Oil Oy, owner of the largest refinery in the Nordic region, to design and equip the Porvoo hydrogen plant they looked no further than Dortmund based GPLN member Contrans Logisitk for their project logistics support.

Uhde’s job is to design and supply equipment for the plant, which lies about thirty km east of Helsinki and is due to come on line mid-2006. But in going from the blueprint to the implementation Uhde’s engineers found themselves faced with having to get 20,000 m3 of equipment and supplies, packed, barged, lifted and delivered to the site ready and in good order. Most of this equipment was coming overland so Uhde’s choices in project forwarders had to be the right one best able to handle all of these services. Thus, Contrans Logistik was the obvious choice. As part of the Global Project Logistics Network, Contrans Logistik known in the project logistics market to have the operational capability to handle the barging, oversized trucking and heavy lift aspects of the job. Contrans Logistik’s managing director, Mr. Ali Javaherian, also brings a great deal of experience in industrial packing and crating to his project logistics customers as well, which Uhde definitely saw as a benefit to their work in Finland.

Approximately 300 truck consignments are required for the job before commissioning but not all truckloads are regular transfers. Several had to be multi-modal movements in the end. “We had to forward a component with a height of 5.3 m from Portugal to the building site,” says Nina Kopplin of Contrans Logistik, “which means that we forward the materials and components via various means of transport.” Nina added that the packing and transport also included huge chimneys for the refinery that were 40 m long. Not a job for your average freight forwarder.

When the project is completed Fortum Oil’s Porvoo plant will be one of the largest one-line stream reforming hydrogen plants in the world. As Uhde has successfully completed these type hydrogen plants in Belarus, Venezuela and Canada in the past, Contrans Logistik will certainly look forward to bidding on Uhde’s next project after Porvoo is done.