When Vallourec, one of the largest manufacturers of Seamless Pipe in the world, announced the closure of their German Plants, Hilco Industrial made contact and inspected the equipment in their works to determine the value and estimate the amount of work involved to remove all equipment.
Background
Vallourec knew Hilco had the experience and trusted us to do their job in a very short period of time; the date for handing over all buildings was set at the 12th December 2024 (which was the deadline for transferring the Real Estate to developers) . Since production was still running until late 2023 and until June, 2024 at their Research & Development Center in RIESA, this was a major task, especially because of the large size of the works in Mühlheim an der Ruhr (34 Ha) and in Dusseldorf-Rath (100 Ha) both full of big complicated machinery and equipment, some of these had been used there for 100 years, these works were the former Mannesmann works.
Sale Conditions
Vallourec did not allow us to sell everything; we were obliged to scrap 2 of the 3 hot lines (Plug-Mill and Mandrel Mill) and certain equipment was destined for internal transfer to other Vallourec Plants around the world; however it was our task to dismantle, pack and ship these.
Type Of Equipment
Production Machinery and complete production lines for the manufacturing of Seamless Pipe from 7.5″ diam up to 26 ” , consisting of a Plug Mill, Mandrel Mill- and Pilger Mill Finishing lines, as well as a Square Tube Production and an Upsetting line. Finishing Equipment such as Sawing, Cutting, Drawing, Turning, Threading, Coupling, Heat Treatment, Straightening, Hydrotesting, Sonic Testing and tremendous quantities of tooling.
Transaction And Execution
Phase 1
This was the Marketing & Sales of the equipment, while it was still producing and the preparation of the Project Execution, selecting, negotiating and contracting with Dismantling, Rigging, Scrapping and Cleaning Contractors.
We managed to sell a number of very large packages of equipment and made a few individual sales. The equipment moved all over the world: Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, USA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman, India, Malaysia, China, Korea and to many European countries.
Phase 2
This was the installation of a full 15-man strong Hilco Project Team, including HSE Inspectors. When production ceased, draining and cleaning the equipment from oil, fluids, sinter, grease etc., started . Then handing over the areas safe (all power and utilities disconnected) before dismantling could start. Scrapping on the equipment was a big task too, only in Dusseldorf-Rath we scrapped 60.000 ton of equipment and material.
In Riesa, a much smaller facility, dismantling , removal and clean-up took almost 12 weeks, in Mühlheim a/d Ruhr and in Dusseldorf Rath it took 11 months each for dismantling, removal and clean-up.
Highlight :
Was the sale of a very large package to a well-known seamless pipe manufacturer, who will use the equipment in a number of their works around the world. But the biggest highlight for Hilco were the words from Vallourec’s CEO at the end of the project dinner : “our best decision was to hire Hilco”
Conclusion:
We are very proud with our success and it shows we can do these very large, complicated jobs in a successful and safe way, having our own Project Execution Team, including designated Health & Safety Inspectors.
