Prysmian investing €250m in its global optical fibre, cable facilities

Prysmian Group, a global player in energy and telecom cable systems industry, has inaugurated its new optical cable plant in Slatina, Romania, the largest of its kind in Europe.

The new Slatina plant is part of a 3-year, €250 million investment plan aimed at improving the Group’s production capacity and capabilities worldwide, to meet the growing demand for optical cables for the deployment of new high-speed telecommunications networks.

“As a worldwide leading player in the industry, we are strongly committed to supporting Governments and Telecom operators in developing new broadband networks by continuing to invest in optical fibre and cable capacity, as well as in new technologies and know-how,” said Philippe Vanhille, Senior Vice President Telecom Business at Prysmian Group. “The digital transformation goes through the development of new broadband and ultra-broadband fibre optic telecommunication networks and only the fibre can provide the necessary speed and reliability. These strategic infrastructures must be based on a high quality and designed to provide high performance over time so as to be ready for the services of the future like 5G, smart cities, smart transportation, and smart homes.”

“Operational excellence is key to confirm competitiveness particularly in dynamic and complex markets like those of optical fibre and cables,” added Andrea Pirondini, COO Prysmian Group. “These investments involve existing optical fibre and cable facilities in Italy, France, the Netherlands, North and South America, together with new plants like those in Slatina, Romania, Presov, Slovak Republic, and Durango, Mexico.”

Prysmian Group’s Telecom business reported sales of €1,164 million in 2016, with adjusted EBITDA climbing to €163 million, posting an increase of +22.0% on 2015 and an improvement in margin to 14.0% from 12.1% in 2015. The Group produced 35 million kilometres of optical fibre in 2016, and has recently presented its record-breaking Flextube® cable with 2,112 fibres, the highest fibre count for a flexible micromodule-based cable to be installed to date.

This confirms its commitment in providing ultra-dense cable solutions that are extremely compact and much faster to install, enabling service providers to easily deploy record number of fibres in difficult or congested areas. In the past weeks, the Group was awarded a $300 million optical cable supply agreement from Verizon Communications to support the company’s US network expansion around a next-generation fibre platform that will speed the deployment of 5G services.

“We have been involved in projects all over the world and we are bringing the undisputed quality of our products, our experience and our commitment to innovation to all of our plants,” ended Vanhille.