VALLOUREC TUBES FOR
MONT SAINT-MICHEL
Mont St Michel, in Normandy, has just become an island, after decades attached to the French coast. A new bridge allows this world-famous site to revert to being an island on certain days in the year, and ensures that access is car-free. Robert Williams reports on the part that French steel company Vallourec has played in the project.
T
he old road causeway to Mont St Michel has been replaced by a new dyke. At the end of the dyke is a bridge made of steel tubes which extends to below the mediaeval abbey. It was French company Vallourec that manufactured the seamless steel tubes that support the new bridge, which opened to the public in July 2014. The 760 metre-long bridge was built with about 400 tons of seamless steel tubes produced in Vallourec’s Aulnoye-Aymeries plant. These tubes form the 124 columns that anchor the bridge deep to the seafloor, removing the need for solid concrete piers. The tubes, up to nine and a half metres long, have a diameter of 244.5mm and wall thicknesses of between 40–60mm. The thinner-walled tubes are used at the beginning and end of the structure, and the thicker-walled ones in the middlesection, where the load factors are greater. A special anti-corrosion coating protects them from aggressive saltwater. 14 Industry Europe
Vallourec has experience in this area, as it is the world leader in premium tubular solutions. As well as for the construction sector, many of its products are built for the energy market, including oil and gas, and also for power generation The company also has expertise across other industrial sectors, including automobile manufacturing. With 24,000 employees, sales of 5.6 billion euros in 2013 – 81 per cent from outside Europe – integrated manufacturing facilities integrated in more than 20 countries and advanced Research and Development, Vallourec offers its customers innovative global solutions to meet the energy challenges of the 21st century. Vallourec developed in the late nineteenth century in two traditionally industrial French regions: the North, around Valenciennes near Lille, Maubeuge near the Belgian border, and Burgundy, around the town of Montbard. Both of these regions are still the
Group’s main production areas, with a head office in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. For the oil and gas industry, Vallourec designs and develops a comprehensive range of products including seamless tubes and premium connections for drilling operations, line pipes and well equipment capable of withstanding extreme operating conditions, including high pressures, high temperatures, deviated wells, deep offshore and corrosive environments
Tubes for multiple applications Vallourec recently won a contract from Technip Umbilicals for the Edradour project operated by TOTAL in the UK. As part of this first industrial order, Vallourec will deliver super duplex welded tubes for umbilicals from its plant located in Venarey-Les Laumes. A key component in subsea installations, umbilicals are made of small-diameter tubes, cables and optical fibres, which con-
