Nato Headquarters

Belgium

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) new headquarters has been under construction since December 2010, and completion is scheduled for 2015. The new 100-acre site in Brussels is designed by Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the Belgian Bureau Assar. The site will feature a series of six-story blocks linked by a central hall. A description of configuration claims the headquarters will look like fingers inter-laced in a symbolic clasp of unity and mutual interdependence. The complex will feature glass-walled elevators overlooking atriums.

China

561 Elevators Purchased for HEFEI

The Hefei removal and rebuilding project has purchased 561 elevators in a deal worth CNY128.19 million (US$19.61 million), making it one of the largest purchases for the city in the lift sector. Three enterprises have been awarded the project. According to a government official, all suppliers have a high reputation and a large share of the market.

Schindler Joint Venture

Schindler announced in March that it is to establish a joint venture with Chinese elevator company Xuchang Xiji Elevator Co. Ltd., which has its own design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance operations. As part of the agreement, Schindler will initially acquire a 46%equity stake in Xuchang Xiji Elevator, with options to purchase the remaining shares. The joint venture, to be named XJ-Schindler (Xuchang) Co. Ltd., will strengthen Schindler’s position in the residential and affordable housing segments in China.

Symax Appoints New Chief Financial Officer

Symax Lift (Holding) Co. Ltd. announced in April that it appointed Xiao Qin (Mary) Ma to chief financial officer and a director of the company. Ma is responsible for Symax’s accounting, reporting and financing activities. She has experience in international finance and accounting and is versed in IFRS, Canadian GAAP and Chinese accounting standards. Prior to joining Symax, Ma was a financial controller and project manager at Zongshen PEM Power Systems Inc. and a financial controller of Chongqing Lear Changan Interior Co., Ltd.

Thyssenkrupp in Fortune Plaza

ThyssenKrupp Elevator (China) has been awarded a contract to supply and install 51 units of vertical-transportation equipment, including 40 gearless elevators with a maximum capacity of 4000 kg and maximum speed of 6 mps, three machine-room-less elevators and eight  escalators for the Fortune Plaza Phase II Office Tower in Beijing’s Central Business District. The 265-meter-high skyscraper is designed by P&T Architects & Engineers Ltd. It offers 150,000 square meters of Grade-A office space and will be one of the tallest buildings in the city when complete in 2012.

Fortune Plaza Phase II Office Tower is applying for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® certification for its design concept of energy savings, environ-mental protection and sustainable development. Its high-speed elevators will feature destination selection control and regenerative drives that will feed energy accumulated in the units’ braking mode back to the power-supply system for other usage within the building to lower elevator energy consumption by around 30%.

Kone Receives Order for Railway Stations

KONE announced in April that it received an order to supply 46 railway stations connecting cities in eight provinces across China. The order includes 178 MonoSpace® elevators and 226 TransitMaster™ escalators. KONE was scheduled to begin installation in April and the stations are scheduled to be open in 2012.

The country is expanding its high-speed railway network to boost the transportation system in an ecologically efficient way. KONE’s solutions will help develop the Central Region, as well as the Yangtze River Delta and the northern Bohai Bay economic zones. The vertical-transportation units will go as far north as Hailar in Inner Mongolia and 3,000 km south to the coastal city of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province.

Fujitec Relocates Headquarters

Fujitec Co., Ltd. has announced that it relocated its global business headquarters which supervises the entire Fujitec Group, from Hikone City, Japan, to Shanghai. The new building is located on a 150,000-square-meter site called “Shanghai Fujitec City,” which features an escalator production base, an R&D base, and a production and supply base for elevator equipment. The move is expected to accelerate business expansion in Asia, and it was made because the Chinese elevator market accounts for almost 50% of the world’s annual demand for elevators.

The new location will oversee all global business,  including product development, sales, production and procurement. President Takakazu Uchiyama will supervise the operations as general manager of the headquarters and regional manager, South Asia. President of Fujitec Singapore, Sugumaran N. Pillai, will assume the position of deputy general manager. Senior Executive Operating Officer Jitsuo Funami will assume the position of general manager of Global Operations Headquarters.

Finland

Kone To Supply Rail Line

KONE has been awarded a contract to supply elevators and escalators to the Helsinki metropolitan region’s new Ring Rail Line. The order includes 21 MonoSpace®  Special elevators, two inclined elevators and 37 Transit-Master® 140 escalators. The project also includes a 10-year KONE Care® Premium maintenance agreement. The escalator order was booked in the first quarter, and the elevators were booked in the second quarter of this year.

The Ring Rail Line will bring services to new areas of Vantaa and form a link to the Helsinki Airport. KONE’s contract covers five stations in the line: Vantaankoski, Leinelä, Airport, Aviapolis and Kivistö.

India

Hitachi Brings in Managing Director

Hitachi, Ltd. has appointed Osamu Kubo as the managing director of Hitachi Lift India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., Japan and headquartered in New Delhi. Kubo has been working in Japan with Hitachi’s Global Business Development Department. He has re-placed Yusuke Takahashi, current man-aging director of Hitachi Elevator Asia Pte. Ltd., the regional headquarters for the company’s Asian regions.

Interlift Anniversary Offer

Interlift 2011 is providing an opportunity for industry members who attend the event on October 18-21 in Augsburg to advertise in its new VisitorGuide. Organizer VFA Interlift will provide 20,000 copies of the guide, which is representative of its 20th anniversary (or, 10th event). In addition, there will be a new advertising tower at the trade-fair parking lot in front of Hall 7, where advertising space will be reserved for trade publications represented at the event.

It was announced in April that exhibitor space was running out quickly, and that the 500 exhibitor target was closer to being reached. During a March 24 meeting in Suzhou, China, an agreement was signed for 40 Chinese companies to be exhibited at the event. ANICA (Italian  Elevator Components Association) will also be presenting 15 new exhibitors.

New Consultants Join Tak Consulting

Two industry veterans have joined TAK Consulting. T.K. Purushothaman and W.C. Rebello lend years of expertise in their respective positions of quality consultant and project director. Purushothaman brings over three-and-a-half decades of experience as a professional electrical engineer who has specialized in the servicing of elevators and escalators. Rebello possesses over three decades of experience spanning various equipment from dumbwaiters to elevators and escalators. He has been involved with many landmark projects, including Mumbai’s international/domestic airport and the HDFC building.

Japan

Earthquake Recovery Underway

The Japanese government announced a US$48.5- billion budget for emergency spending on April 22 in the aftermath of the March 11 9.0-magnitude tsunami- triggering earthquake (ELEVATOR WORLD, May 2011). Thus far, at least 14,133 have been confirmed dead, and 13,346 more remain missing. More than 130,000 live in evacuation centers, and at least 82 children in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures have been orphaned. The disasters’ monetary damage toll has been estimated by the government as US$300 billion. The earmarked money marks Japan’s largest reconstruction effort since World War II.

EW Correspondent Masaru Matsumoto reports that more than 10 tremors per day up to 7.1 on the Richter scale continued to occur in April. Also, the government and operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were still trying to regain control of the facility. One reactor manufacturer, Toshiba Corp., has proposed the decommissioning of four troubled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant over 10 years. Also in April, the crisis at the plant was raised from level 5 to 7, the highest possible (formerly applied only to the disaster at the Chernobyl [formerly Soviet Union] Nuclear Power Plant).

Hitachi revealed in an April statement that the escalators and printed circuit board for escalator and elevator production partially resumed at the company’s Mito Works facility, located in the hard-hit area of Hitachinaka-City. Hitachi states that it is accelerating its initiatives to recover full-scale production.

Smart planet reported that Otis entirely avoided trapped or injured passengers in its elevators during the earthquakes thanks to seismic detectors. The company has 80,000 elevators in Japan and 2,400 Japanese employees. It took 13,000 calls at its 21 call centers in the 48 hours following the initial shock, and 16,700 elevators were shut down as a result of the temblor. Of that number, 16,400 were restarted in seven days. The detectors are credited for sensing that a quake was occurring, then moving the cars to the ground floor, where passengers could exit. The units then remained out of service until inspected.

New Zealand

Christchurch Earthquake

Christchurch, New Zealand, has had numerous after-shocks since the 6.3-magnitude temblor that struck the center of the city on February 22, leaving 182 dead.  ELEVATOR WORLD Correspondent Bob Johnston, who lives in the city, reports that aftershocks of at least 4.0 in magnitude have consistently impeded recovery efforts. The national government expects to spend NZD15 billion (US$12.12 billion) on the city’s recovery, as hundreds of city buildings alone require demolition.

We are happy to report that the city is rebounding, with one example being “Operation Suburb” (in effect from February 25 to March 5), which the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand and Department of Building and Housing have put together to, among other things, quickly assess the health and safety of residential buildings in hard-hit suburbs. A firsthand account of this intense recovery effort will be featured in next month’s issue. . . . Editor

Qatar

ETA Gets Order for Barwa Development

Electromec Technical Associates (ETA) has been awarded the vertical-transportation package for the Barwa Financial District Project in the West Bay district of Doha. All 123 elevators and 10 escalators in the office towers and 21 elevators and four escalators in the hotel block will be supplied by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Japan) through ETA, its representative in Qatar. Most of the units are high speed.

The development is comprised of nine office towers and a hotel tower. The project features an outer ring of six office towers ascending in a clockwise direction varying 20 to 35 stories high and an inner ring of three office towers and the hotel, ascending in a counterclockwise direction varying 31 to 50 stories in height. This development is expected to change the skyline of the city and be the new headquarters of state-owned Qatar Petroleum. Designed by KEO International Consultants and under construction by joint-venture partners Bouygues Batiment International + Midmac Contracting + Al Jaber, the project is expected to be complete by 2013.

Romania

Mitsubishi Starts Elevator/Escalator Business

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp. have started operating their elevator and escalator business in Romania through the sales channel of Elmas S.R.L. Mitsubishi Corp. has more than 100 branches worldwide, but this is the first Eastern Europe venture for the company. Elmas was established in 1990 and has four business units, including elevators and escalators. The two groups unite under a common business policy and share the same product and service goals.

Singapore

800-ELEVATOR ORDER FOR FUJITEC

Fujitec Singapore Corp. Ltd. has received two orders for about 800 residential elevators from the Housing Development Board of Singapore (HDB). The first, called the “20th Term Housing Project,” is for about 300 elevators (including high-speed models) to be installed in high-rise residential buildings with 30 floors or more. The second project is called the “16th Term Modernization Project” and involves around 500 elevators (some of which will be new installations). Here, HDB plans to refurbish the existing elevators over the next four years.

HDB orders to Fujitec Singapore have thus far totaled about 20,000 units (consisting of new installations and modernization projects), since the receipt of the first bulk order for 2,000 elevators in 1972. The Singapore Government has implemented a full-fledged public apartment policy since 1972. At present, nearly 90% of the people of Singapore live in high-rise apartments supplied by HDB.

South Korea

Kesi Load Analysis

The Korea Elevator Safety Institute (KESI) has developed a system that can perform load analysis for hydraulic elevators. The system eliminates the need to place weight in a hydraulic elevator to test its load-bearing capacity. With the system, users can utilize the device to test the elevator’s maximum load. It takes 40 minutes to use the actual weight to test the load, but using the device can cut that time in half.

Samsung Life Installs QCCESS Systems

Samsung Life Insurance in Seoul has installed 28 Qccess Air@-EL300 systems throughout its headquarters building. The system is a laser optical video transmitter specifically designed for elevator closed-circuit TV video-transmission applications (page 22). ThyssenKrupp Elevator Korea con -ducted the initial performance and suitability tests through its A/S Center. The Air@-EL300 installations follow a 2008 incident when the closed-circuit TV video for the elevators was interrupted due to torn coaxial cables that resulted in a “noisy” picture. The result caused the elevators to be put out of service.

United Kingdom

The Lift Show Website

The Lift Show (TLS), to be held on April 18-19, 2012 at international exhibition and convention center ExCeL London (ELEVATOR WORLD, April 2011), has announced that its website (www.theliftshow.com) is up and running. The website already contains useful background infor-mation regarding TLS, as well as floor plans, sponsorship details, booking forms, etc. Over the next few months, further details such as exhibitor contacts, speakers and seminar topics will be added to the website. The independently organized event is to be launched in response to the industry demand for a U.K. exhibition every two years.

IAEE to Host Elevcon 2012

Elevcon 2012, the 19th world congress of the International Association of Elevator Engineers (IAEE), will take place on May 22-24, 2012, at the Deauville Beach Resort Congress Center in Miami Beach. The event will include presentations by vertical-transportation experts from across the globe. A call for papers invites experts to submit a 100-word abstract no later than October 1 to propose a paper at the event. The written papers will be included in Elevator Technology 19: Proceedings of Elevcon 2012. For more information, visit website: www.elevcon.com.

Thyssenkrupp Elevator Names New CEO

ThyssenKrupp Elevator has named Ramón Sotomayor as its new CEO of the Southern Europe/Africa/Middle East (SEAME) operating unit. Sotomayor has been deputy CEO of the operating unit and managing director of the Regional Center Spain since November 2009. He has been with the company for more than 20 years, including five years as CEO of the Escalators/Passenger Boarding Bridges operating unit.

Sotomayor succeeds Javier del Pozo, whowill retire after almost 30 years with the company, including seven years as CEO of the SEAME operating unit.