Vallourec has inaugurated a new plant for manufacturing tubes for steam generators in Nansha, a district of Guangzhou, in southeastern China. This new plant of Valinox Nucléaire, a Vallourec subsidiary specializing in the production of tubes for nuclear power plants, represents an investment of EUR 55 million and will eventually employ 200 people. The commissioning of the plant is planned for the third quarter of 2013. In the presence of Ding Hongdu, permanent member of PCC’s committee for Guangzhou city and Bernard Bigot, General Administrator of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Philippe Crouzet, Chairman of the Vallourec Management Board, said at the inauguration ceremony: “With this new facility, we will be able to locally support the extensive development program of Chinese nuclear power. Vallourec is proud to serve this ambition with its technological expertise in the area of tubes for steam generators suited to the latest generation of nuclear power plants.”
Complementing the 2011 extension of Valinox Nucléaire’s French plant in Montbard, the new Nansha facility will make it possible to increase Vallourec’s annual production capacity of steam generator tubes by 2,000 km per year. The Group’s total capacity for steam generator tube production will increase by a factor of four over a period of ive years to reach a level of almost 7,000 km per year. Vallourec already supplies with steam generator tubes 80% of Chinese nuclear power plants.
