The complete bathroom package DEBA

facturing excellence. This in turn is enabling the group to meet its high quality standards, from producing the whole vehicle to handing over the keys. Finally, a special jury prize was awarded to two long serving suppliers, IBIDEN and Total Lubricants, to honour their long-standing partnership with the automotive group.

Diverse innovations

The group believes that innovative technology can have the greatest impact on improving automotive safety. This includes automotive safety systems and radar-based technologies, as well as environmental incar considerations. By bringing down costs the group can offer these advanced features as standard. Recent examples include Blind Spot detection systems using ultrasound sensors that cost ten times less than traditional radar systems.

In addition, the company produces headup display systems that cost three times less than rival solutions and these are available as standard equipment on the current Peugeot 308, Citroen DS5 and Peugeot 508 models. Furthermore, the group has also developed less expensive ‘Stop & Start’ and hybrid solutions for its electronic vehicles. n

For further details of PSA Peugeot Citroen’s latest innovative products and services visit: www.psa-peugeot-citroen.com

THE COMPLETE BATHROOM PACKAGE

DEBA has been supplying high quality modular bathrooms to cruise ships, hotels, hospitals and housing projects for many years. Now its bathrooms have been chosen for one of London’s most prestigious development projects. Peter Mercer reports.

IN July of this year DEBA, the German market leader in premium bathroom systems, signed a contract to supply approximately 1300 modular bathroom units for the Battersea Power Station re-development project, one of the largest construction projects in Europe in recent years. Phase One of the redevelopment will include a main block constructed around the historic Grade II power station itself and a second eight storey block next to it. The project forms part of a strategic plan to create a high-density, mixed use development that will include apartments, retail facilities, business studios, theatre space and two levels of basement parking.

DEBA is working with Carillion who is the main contractor for Phase 1 of the project. Eamonn Witter, DEBA’s UK manager of sales and marketing, said, “DEBA is perhaps the only off-site bathroom production company that can deliver completely bespoke solutions in which the customer can have their design wishes fulfilled with an unrivalled level of quality in both the structure and the finish.

“When I first began working in the UK market, there was a good deal of scepticism about the use of the ‘Pod’ bathroom concept in complex construction projects – people were not convinced that these products were

engineered to a standard that could meet the very demanding requirements of high end construction projects. But after we successfully completed a number of large hotel projects, including two Grange hotels in London, and 15 senior living projects in the greater London area, DEBA was being talked about in the industry as offering solutions that combined advanced engineering, high quality products and ease of installation. DEBA was able to prove that it could defy conventional on-site wisdom and deliver precision-made, lightweight yet robust bathroom modules direct to the site where they could simply be craned in and connected to water and electricity supplies in between 5 to 10 hours per unit.

“Building a bathroom on-site in the conventional way requires seven or eight skilled – and costly – tradesmen working in a confined space, all trying to co-ordinate their work and bring to their materials to the site while attempting to deliver a bathroom that will meet the ever more exacting demands of the client. With a DEBA bathroom module all that work is done at the factory in carefully controlled conditions to ensure that the quality of the delivered product is outstanding.”

DEBA prefabricated bathrooms are based on a self-supporting steel sandwich construction that includes floor, wall and ceiling elements, a temporary door and all necessary electrical, sanitary installations as well as heating, ventilation and water supply and waste pipes. They are delivered readyto-install direct to the site and after craning in or installed in single units, they are simply connected up and ready for immediate use.

Changing markets

Its reputation for delivering high-quality, designoriented bathroom systems in large quantities has made DEBA the market leader in its native Germany for more than 20 years. Originally the business was located in the port city of Kiel, in Northern Germany, where it specialised in producing high-end, engineered bathrooms for cruise ships. For many years major cruise line operators such as Royal Caribbean were among it’s regular clients. As part of the reunification of Germany after 1989, government incentives were offered to businesses to set up operations in the former East and DEBA took the opportunity to acquire an old engineering works with a very large site in Salzwedel, south-east of Hamburg. It transferred its modern CNC machines and essential tooling to the new site along with its core management team who recruited and trained a local workforce.

In the following years the cruise ship building business in Northern Europe went into decline as it was increasingly unable to compete with low cost producers in Korea, China, India and other parts of Asia. With its modular bathrooms for cruise ships now uncompetitive because of the long distances to the Asian shipyards, DEBA began to