The engineering group responsible for the construction of the O-I Gironcourt plant in France gave an update on its progress at the recent Glassman Europe event.
Nicolas Lelorrain, Project Manager at Chovet-Db2i, gave a presentation titled O-I and Chovet-Db2i set for success on Gironcourt partnership, at the event in Lyon, France in September. Chovet is responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) of a new furnace at the Gironcourt site.
Once completed the €60 million investment will increase the number of furnaces at the plant to three, with nine production lines. It means O-I can produce 1.9 billion beer bottles a year compared to the current 1.3 billion.
Mr Lelorrain said the project was still on schedule to be completed by March 2020.
He said: “All signs currently point to success in early Spring 2020. We are confident, given our experience with the Saverglass plant in Guadalajara, Mexico. Everything is still on schedule.” The Glassman conference included 17 presentations over two days.
The conference explored two themes: Day one was devoted to Trends in Glassmaking while day two was titled the Future Glass Forum and investigated themes such as Industry 4.0, digital glassmaking and Big Data in glassmaking. Glassman Europe was a combined trade show and conference that took place in Lyon, France.
The trade show’s focus was on the glass packaging industry such as container glass, tableware and pharmaceutical glass.
A review of the event will appear in the October issue of Glass International.