THE ECHO - Ferrostaal

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>MAN FERROSTAAL CELEBRATES 50 YEARS IN COLUMBIA:
A COUNTRY WITH SPECIAL MARKETS
Columbia is the country in Latin America in which MAN
Ferrostaal has gained the strongest foothold and in which the
company’s reputation is best established. After 50 years in the
country, Columbia is now considered to be one of the company’s
“traditional” markets.
In Columbia, MAN Ferrostaal operates in fields that the company
has pursued to the same degree in almost no other country in the
world, notably the pump business. For decades, people in Bogotá,
Columbia’s capital, said that every drop of water that came out of
a pipe had passed through one of the pumps delivered by MAN
Ferrostaal. Of course, sometimes it didn’t come because the completion
and maintenance of the water supply for a city of 5 million
people presented extraordinary challenges to the suppliers and
technicians.
FIRST SUBSIDIARY OPENS IN BOGOTÁ
On 2 December 1955, MAN Ferrostaal opened its first subsidiary in
Bogotá in an office in the city centre. Herbert Jendrach, Managing
Director for 24 years, left his stamp on all of the activities he oversaw.
After the sale of rail cars to the national railways and MAN busses
to the public transportation services in Bogotá, Ferrostaal de
Colombia Ltda. entered the market for pumps, valves and large
slide gates for waterworks. The overseas office sold and assembled
large components for deep wells and, in this field, became the
most important representatives worldwide of the manufacturer
KSB, one of the leading suppliers of pumps, valves and associated
systems. Four other offices were established in Cartagena, Cali,
Medellin and Neiva.
The sale in the 1970s of two submarines built by HDW in Kiel
marked the Columbian office’s largest order to date. The successful
completion of this order provided the basis for a long and fruitful
relationship with the Columbian Navy, which has placed orders
for marine research vessels, corvettes and cost-guard surveillance
systems. In 1986, José Huerga took the helm as Managing Director
and steered the Columbian office through 16 more successful
years. He saw through the merger with Intergrafica, a company
with 35 years of experience in the printing press market in Latin
America.
40 EMPLOYEES
Since 2002, Camilo Martinez has been in charge of an office of
40 employees and has been implementing projects relating to the
same and assembly of machines and components, Industrial
Systems and Transportation, Marine Systems, Materials and
Printing & Packaging. The most important orders include the supply
of pumps, valves and large slide gates for the country’s waterworks,
as was the case 40 years ago. Orders for submarine spare
parts are currently in process. MAN Ferrostaal de Colombia Ltda.
supplied the Columbian Central Bank with Schuler presses for
coin minting at the end of 2005.
COOPERATION
To complete these order, MAN Ferrostaal’s overseas offices works
in close collaboration with other companies within the MAN
Group. As part of a current project with an order volume of
4 million US dollars, MAN Ferrostaal de Colombia will deliver and
assemble a MAN B&W engine with a capacity of 3,000 kilowatts.
Meanwhile, the Navy has placed a delivery order for five MAN
B&W generators for two ships.
Frank Hoffmann