The internationally operating foundry company Procast Guss GmbH has started a restructuring process the company is adapting its structures to the current requirements of the market and its customers Procast is using the legal possibilities of a self-administration procedure for the reorganization is increasingly becoming a risky location for foundries,” emphasizes Managing Director Patrick G ”We want to further expand our market position as a leading European customer foundry we have to adapt our capacities in Germany to the requirements and call-off figures of our customers The debtor-in-possession proceedings that have now been initiated offer us the necessary options and instruments for this.” The management of Procast Guss GmbH therefore filed a corresponding application with the District Court of Bielefeld this week The court has approved the application and ordered preliminary debtor-in-possession proceedings Business operations will continue in full at the company's two production sites in Gütersloh and Nortorf orders will be processed and delivered as usual The wages and salaries of the approximately 225 employees affected employees are secure Invoices will also continue to be paid in accordance with the applicable debtor-in-possession regulations The debtor-in-possession proceedings provide companies with a legal framework for quickly and effectively implementing the necessary restructuring measures while business operations continue as usual The management remains in office and manages the restructuring itself it can fall back on a range of instruments that are not available outside of such proceedings contracts can be terminated more easily and necessary restructuring measures can be implemented particularly quickly and effectively The procedure is only open to companies that address their economic difficulties at an early stage and where there is sufficient room for maneuver for a solution the company has appointed the experienced restructuring expert Patrick G Weber as Chief Restructuring Officer (CRO) He will manage the implementation of the reorganization together with the general representative the Hamburg lawyer Andreas Romey from the law firm ECKERT RECHTSANWÄLTE is concentrating on his role in the sister company in Spain and in particular on the further ramp-up of production there Marcel Streeck from the law firm Münzel & Böhm as the provisional insolvency monitor to supervise the restructuring in the interests of the creditors The self-administration proceedings relate exclusively to Procast Guss GmbH which has two plants in Gütersloh (around 145 employees) and Nortorf (around 80 employees) The company decided to close its site in Bad Saulgau some time ago This is currently being implemented and will be completed by the end of the year with its four production sites in Gütersloh the group is suffering from high energy costs and the weak economy in Germany the Gütersloh site is particularly affected by its high cost structure Procast Handform GmbH in Kiel and Procast Guss Espana S.L in Abadiño in northern Spain “We continue to believe in the foundry business we continue to believe in our European foundry group,” said Sven Dübbers “Having modernized the company and given it a broader footing by acquiring the site in Spain and investing in the other sites we are now tackling the cost structure in Germany with determination This will enable us to position the company competitively in the long term and The Procast Group is one of Europe's leading jobbing foundries Procast offers its customers a complete range of services: construction coating and assembly of iron cast components Procast has a production capacity of 55,000 tons of cast products Both standardized and innovative iron casting materials are used Procast Guss's customers come from the mechanical engineering commercial vehicle and tool manufacturing industries Around 400 employees work at a total of four locations www.proca.st I would like to receive the bi-weekly Foundry-Planet newsletter with all latest news Plus the special newsletters – all can be cancelled anytime and at no cost the Svartevatn dam in southern Norway's granite massif holds back vast amounts of water the 1.4 billion cubic metres of water look peaceful and smooth behind the spectacular structure which contains more stones than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt you can see a maelstrom at a spot near the edge where water plummets downward This is the starting point of a cascade of reservoirs connected through subterranean pipelines that is over 75 kilometres long and drops 850 metres down It leads to Tonstad’s Sira-Kvina power plant The plant was carved into the stone at the end of the 1960s and equipped with four turbines It has the highest hydropower output in all of Norway with 3.9 billion kilowatt hours Green electricity produced here now also flows into the German power grid On a high plateau a few hundred meters above the Tonstad hydropower plant a new substation has been constructed to facilitate transport of a formidable 1,400 megawatts – this can supply 3.6 million households – through the sea to northern Germany It is part of one of Europe's most important electricity hubs Hydropower from this region has already been sent to Denmark or the Netherlands for years the then biggest power cable was completed It is not uncommon for Winter to come early or linger longer at the elevation of the Svartevatn dam while the valley below is green KfW IPEX-Bank finances projects all over the world in the field of power “KfW's participation is a clear commitment to climate and environmental action - with the exchange of electricity from wind and hydropower made possible by the cable we are creating security of supply and increasing the share of renewables in the electricity mix "We are proud to be involved and to have supported NordLink from planning to commissioning," says Velibor Marjanovic Member of the Management Board of KfW IPEX-Bank NordLink was commissioned in the presence of the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg on 27 May 2021.” NordLink was initiated around eleven years ago “At that time we had a critical situation here in Norway,” says Stein Håvard Auno then Project Director for NordLink at Statnett the state operator of the Norwegian power system and the reservoirs were nearly empty in the winter We needed to import electricity from coal and nuclear power In that way NordLink is important to Norway's energy security It helps us keep our electricity prices stable even during dry seasons our energy mix is becoming more sustainable we are making an important contribution to the energy transition in Europe.” a faster energy transition – this triad also applies at the other end of the 623-kilometre-long double cable made of positively and negatively poled cables The counterpart to the substation in Tonstad is in Schleswig-Holstein in the town of Nortorf near Wilster which convert the alternating current obtained into low-loss direct current for transporting it through the cable and change it back into alternating current at the end are at the heart of the two substations which count among the most powerful substations in the world Around three metres above the ground of the converter facility the silver valves hang on steel cables like precious shrines They contain the newest generation of a technology that experts call VSCHVDC: high-voltage direct current power transmission in self-commuted power converters the power grid is maintained by the Dutch-German electricity grid operator TenneT says Gunnar Spengel who at the time was the Project Manager for NordLink “NordLink connects two renewable energy sources that optimally supplement each other,” Spengel says a surplus of wind energy can be exported to Norway NordLink thus contributes to reciprocal supply security.” However the direction the electricity flows is largely determined by the electricity market It can be assumed that the exporting party is the one with the cheaper price at the time The team at TenneT is able to see how much power flows in which direction from the control room in Lehrte near Hanover TenneT's entire German power grid is controlled from there whereby energy flow is automated to a great extent during normal operation The final destination of the Norwegian power coming from the NordLink cable Shortly after its arrival within a matter of seconds in Nortorf the power generated by Norway's cascading waters is used in the German electricity grid And the same applies in the other direction: it is impossible to specify which of the approximately 30,000 German wind turbines produced power for Norway A special type of cable makes this exchange technically possible The 13-centimetre thick and 50-kilogram-per-metre cable consists of tailored components that make it particularly robust and conductive The electricity itself flows through a massive core made of copper This is insulated and protected by a wide layer of paper saturated with oil It also has a casing of steel wire and different plastics The cable is made in the production halls of two companies The French company Nexans manufactured in Norway and then laid the Norwegian section of NordLink; NKT from Karlskrona in southern Sweden contributed the cable for the German side 516 kilometres of cable were laid through the North Sea “There is a lot of pressure on the project because this is the first time we are doing some things in these dimensions and there is a lot of attention on us,” says Gerd-Wolf Balk “But I feel good about working on a future-oriented project on a new generation of energy and energy transmission our cables symbolise that our future will only be a success if we work towards it together.” Per shift 25 people were involved in around-the-clock production for the NordLink cable From the summer of 2016 until February 2019 208 kilometres of the mass-impregnated 525-kilovolt cable was produced 54 kilometres of it are in the ground in Northern Germany 154 kilometres are underwater in Germany's territorial waters; Nexans laid an additional 362 kilometres in the Danish and Norwegian parts of the North Sea NKT Management needed to obtain many more approvals for the land route than the sea route the interests of nearly 100 affected parties needed to be taken into account between the landing in Büsum and the substation in Nortorf and countless authorities needed to be consulted which was associated with environmental requirements the underwater cable was more difficult to lay Once the Norwegian part in the open sea was completed by the Nexans special ship Offshore Construction Manager Tony Collins and a team of 75 experts Everything on board of both ships is designed with the only intention to lay submarine cable The most important aspect: the ships must be able to maintain their positions to minimise straining forces even in rough seas The NKT Victoria transported two NordLink sections measuring 60 kilometres each from Karlskrona in its slowly rotating cable carousel cautiously lowering the cable over the curved stern into the water The laying takes place at a very low speed of less than half a knot (about 0.9 km/h) - depending on weather and current conditions The greatest risk to the power connection on the bottom of the North Sea is anchors and otter trawls which is made up of sand and clay and has a maximum depth of 410 metres was flushed out by around one and a half metres Five crossings with cable running from East to West also needed to be protected Published on KfW Stories: 8 September 2020 Close to 80 per cent of the energy produced worldwide still comes from fossil fuel sources Burning fossil fuels also generates costs for the health system due to air pollution and costs for climate-related damages that harm the general public All United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Agenda in 2015 At its heart is a list of 17 goals for sustainable development known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Our world should become a place where people are able to live in peace with each other in ways that are ecologically compatible by the following photographers/photo agencies are used: Sign In Subscribe Now Dialogue and debate are integral to a free society and we welcome and encourage you to share your views on the issues of the day. We ask that you be respectful of others and their points of view, refrain from personal attacks and stay on topic. To learn about our commenting policies and how our community-based moderation works, please read our Community Guidelines.