Prysmian’s highest capacity Underwater FlexTube cable deployed in Hong Kong’s Victoria harbour.
Prysmian Australia scores another world record after delivering the densest and highest fibre count underwater optical fibre cable ever made.
An Underwater FlexTube cable containing 1,728 optical fibres was designed and manufactured for Australian telecommunications provider, Superloop, and its TKO Express project. Superloop successfully deployed the submarine cable by horizontal directional drilling and plough burial between February 16-19, 2017. The previous record, set in 2015, when Prysmian manufactured an underwater FlexTube cable with 720 fibres.
TKO Express connects the areas of Siu Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island and the data centre hub of Tseung Kwan O (TKO) Industrial Estate on the mainland.
To complete the project, Prysmian Group used its strength as a global manufacturer with effective intercompany cooperation.
The base 1728F FlexTube cable was made in Europe, in the Calais, France factory. It was then airfreighted to Australia to apply additional layers of moisture barriers and aluminium tape in the Dee Why, Sydney factory.
To ensure that the cable was up to the rigours of being buried up to 5m in to the Hong Kong seabed, double armouring layers of wrapped steel wires were applied. A final sheath was applied at the Group’s Liverpool plant, located west of Sydney.
“We are extremely proud to be part of such an amazing project, to contribute to history by making something that links the World”
Frederick Persson CEO at Prysmian Australia and New Zealand
“Prysmian has been able to manufacture the densest and most compact underwater cable ever made thanks to the co-operation between local and overseas Prysmian affiliates, combined with our specific technical requirements,” said Matt Whitlock COO at Superloop.
“Seeing the cable being manufactured in France and then processed in two different plants in Australia and then transported on a plane to Hong Kong was simply fantastic. Prysmian has proven its ability to master the engineering challenges of submarine cable construction and installation and then to deliver at 15T drum on time.” Mr. Whitlock added.
“We are extremely proud to be part of such an amazing project, to contribute to history by making something that links the World,” said Frederick Persson, CEO at Prysmian Australia.
The project commenced over two years ago with the first design of the underwater cable.
The manufacturing process took almost six months, shipping the cable to Hong Kong early last December.
As Alice Codenotti, Telecom Business Manager at Prysmian Australia said, “It required a strict coordination of resources and processes. We wanted to make sure our customer tight deadlines were achieved. We understood the significant, positive impact this cable had to their business in Hong Kong and we have delivered”.
“It was a logistics challenge indeed”, continues John Schipelliti, head of Logistics at Prysmian Australia “airfreighting a drum weighing 15 Tonnes was something that we have never done before. But we mastered it and the drum was successfully delivered to the TKO Port three days before the promised date. It has been definitely great success for both companies”.
With this project Prysmian continues to prove that it truly is a global manufacturer that leverages on its worldwide knowledge and capabilities to respond to the always growing technological challenges.
About Prysmian Group
World leader in the industry of high-technology cables and systems for energy and telecommunications, with sales of over €7 billion in 2015, the Prysmian Group is a truly global company with subsidiaries in over 50 countries, 88 plants, 17 research & development centres and about 19,000 employees. From our production sites, two in Sydney and one in New Lynn, Prysmian manufactures and supplies the most comprehensive range of energy, data and telecommunications cables to customers all over Australia and New Zealand as well as export markets around the world. We are a major supplier to Telecommunications Carriers, Power Utilities, Electrical Wholesalers & Contractors, Original Equipment Manufacturers, Petrochemical and Mining facilities throughout Australia and have an extensive range of products designed to suit specific applications.
About Superloop
Superloop is a leading independent provider of digital services in the Asia Pacific region. The Group owns and operates over 540 km of fibre networks in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, connecting over 70 of the region’s key data centres. The network is continually expanding with further diverse connections recently completed to the Singapore Exchange, IO and NTT data centres in Singapore.
In Hong Kong, Superloop has established a 110 km fibre optic network to initially connect 30 strategic sites including the Hong Kong Stock Exchange data centre. The Company has constructed TKO Express, the first submarine cable to connect the traditional carrier hotels located in Chai Wan on Hong Kong Island and the data centre campus located at Hong Kong Science and Technology Park’s Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate on the mainland, providing much needed physical diversity and a low latency path between Hong Kong’s major finance and technology hubs. TKO Express is the world’s largest fibre core count subsea cable system.
The Group also operates businesses including BigAir Group, APEXNetworks and CINENET Systems. For more information, visit: www.superloop.com
