How the Middle East benefits from products made in Europe

Made in Europe is still in trend

The Jeddah Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be the world’s tallest skyscraper expected to be completed in 2017 by the Jeddah Economic Company. It will be the first building to reach 1km in height. It has been designed and planned by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architects (AS+GG). The tower will feature a five-star Four Seasons hotel, luxury apartments, and offices as it offers more than 500,000 m2 floor space. With an observation deck on the 157th Level, it will have the highest ever visitor platform at 630m. In total, it will be bigger than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Hence, it will overtake the current tallest building in the world. The Jeddah tower will be the centerpiece of the “Kingdom City”, a new urban quarter on a 5skm site in the north of Jeddah.

Many international engineering and building material companies are involved in this enormous construction. In this article, we focus especially on some of the brands “Made in Europe” contributing to the Jeddah Tower. For this prestige project, only reliable and high-quality products can be applied and installed. The Jeddah Tower development is a particular challenge for every contributor due to difficult rural conditions in an active earthquake zone.

Constructed with cranes from Liebherr & Wolffkran

Jeddah Economic Company acquired six cranes by the German equipment manufacturer Liebherr & Wolffkran. The experts also provided support to the contractor to ensure efficient crane planning. Within this collaboration, reliability was crucial for the successful start of the project. Regarding the enormous heights for this gigantic project, only the resistant and tallest cranes in the world can be used. Some of them had to be positioned on the sky terrace or on platforms outside of the Jeddah Tower in order to move upwards in several climbing stages. With its ‘climbing cranes’ Liebherr & WolffKran has set a new world record. (Liebherr, 2014)

Liebherr tower crane

Build on piles from BAUER

Furthermore, Saudi BAUER Foundation Contractors Ltd., a subsidiary of BAUER Spezialtiefbau GmbH from Schrobenhausen in Germany has completed the foundation construction in 2014. The association installed in a total of 72 extremely long piles for the tallest building in the world. The 1.5m and 1.8m diameter piles were built into the desert ground up to depths of 110 meters by machines from the sister company “Bauer Maschinen”. (Bauer, 2012)

Bauer construction machines

Moving upwards with KONE elevators

KONE, a Finnish elevator and escalator company supports the project with its unique and advanced technology, the world’s fastest and highest DoubleDeck elevators. Mr. Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic Company is delighted to cooperate with KONE and mentioned: “Building the tallest tower in the world is about human ingenuity and the strength of the materials used. Based on this premise, KONE is the only vertical transportation service provider in the world capable of delivering what we need at the Kingdom Tower – specifically the capability of traveling at a speed of over 10 meters per second with DoubleDeck elevators to reach the highest liveable floor in the world in 52 seconds. In addition, the high-speed elevators will rise 660 meters to the observation deck, making it the world’s highest elevator rise”. (Kone, 2015)

As we can see made in Europe construction products are essential in international projects that are changing the world’s façades. It is always a huge confirmation to use high-quality products ‘made in Europe’ for such great impact enterprises. Have you heard about projects in which products from the Finnish and German brands above or others are also used? We would love to hear about your examples for good old European quality.

Author: Julia Bergeest

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