Oerlikon Schlafhorst to deliver 10,000 ton spinning plant to the United Arab Emirates

One of the major spinning plants for the production of high-grade cotton yarns in the entire Gulf region is coming into existence in the Fujairah emirate and will be finished by the end of 2007. The volume of this ambitious project amounts to an equivalent of about 50 million Euros. More than 18 million Euros are allotted to the turnkey machine technology with accessories. The mastermind planning and equipment, including engineering, is in the hands of Oerlikon Schlafhorst, leading in the process competence for quality yarns up to the finished high-end yarn package.

Since the project was started in 2005, Oerlikon Schlafhorst is involved as technical consultant and project planner– from the feasibility study via the planning of a turnkey plant up to the production calculations. “The decision was made in our favour because our overall solution was convincing. This comprises the availability and the process competence for machines that are coordinated over the entire value added chain as well as the know-how regarding the demands of buildings and infrastructure“, says Matthias Nierhaus, Head of Oerlikon Schlafhorst Engineering.

The company will equip the machinery with 26 ring spinning machines type Zinser 351 with 1,200 spinning positions each, 15 flyers type Zinser 670 with 120 spindles each and 14 yarn package winders type Autoconer 338. To complete the plant, the German partners Trützschler from Mönchengladbach and LTG from Stuttgart will supply additional machine technology.

After its start, that is scheduled for early 2008, the spinning plant will be able to produce 10,000 tons of high-quality ring-spun yarn per annum all in all. The raw material predominantly comes from captive resources. The mother company of the plant operator United Textiles FZE pushed the project and got an international bank group for the financing. The investment of this bank group allows to cover 45,000 sq.m. of land with a complex of buildings of 24,000 sq.m, containing offices, production facilities, maintenance rooms and storage space. In future, approx. 350 employees at the location in the free-trade zone will arrange the production and the export of the quality yarns mainly to Europe, Asia and Russia, but also to the Middle East and to North Africa. For this purpose, the plant technology is designed to be fit for the future and expandable.

With this project, the Gulf region sets a cornerstone as a regional turning point for the cotton processing industry. It also represents another important reference project for Oerlikon Schlafhorst: “With this project, we once again give proof of our engineering competence. In addition to our high-end machines, our strength lies in the realisation of complex total solutions for turnkey plants from the planning to the commissioning and, moreover, from one source for our customers", says Nierhaus. Including the 31,200 ring spinning spindles for United Textiles, Oerlikon Schlafhorst installed, from 2005 to 2007, a total of more than 62,600 ring spinning spindles in Uzbekistan, Russia and the Gulf region alone.