Piller UNIBLOCK™ solution at Maghreb Emballage, Algeria

Piller France deploys a 3.2MW kinetic energy storage backed UPS installation to ensure the new production lines operate at top efficiency at Maghreb Emballage, one of Algeria’s leading packaging companies

Piller France has commissioned 3.2MW of UPS protection with kinetic energy storage to keep operations powered at Maghreb Emballage, one of Algeria’s major packaging manufacturing companies.

Despite Covid related travel restrictions, Piller France, a subsidiary of the global power protection leader Piller, commissioned 3.2MW of Power with two 60MJ flywheels at the factory near Oran.

The installation at the new Maghreb Emballage state of the art manufacturing site consisted of two UNIBLOCK™ 1800kW rotary UPS coupled with Powerbridge 60+ flywheel energy storage.

The deployment of Piller UNIBLOCK™ rotary technology addresses poor grid quality issues by ensuring high quality conditioned power delivery and protection at the Maghreb Emballage factory.

Powerbridge is the UPS dedicated kinetic energy store with the highest capacity available worldwide.

Each Powerbridge 60+ is able to supply a 1MW load for one minute. It benefits from low losses compared to previous generations of flywheels. It can operate with minimum maintenance over a 20+ year lifespan without any drop in capacity. The kinetic energy storage system’s operating temperature range exceeds 40°C making Powerbridge an especially attractive alternative to battery backed UPS in hot climates.

Maghreb Emballage has been producing high quality corrugated packaging since 1948. The company now has three production sites. With a long history of technology and people investment it is committed to providing the highest quality packaging and daily service to customers in sectors from manufacturing to retail.

Mr Mered Maghreb Emballage CEO, has long recognised the importance of stable power protection technology in order to provide the best possible customer service.

Maghreb Emballage Technical Director Mr Mih said poor quality power supply was greatly disrupting its production sites and that traditional Static UPS had proved unreliable.

He said: “Static UPS were in particular poor at dealing with power feedback coming from the production machines, some of which are rated above 1600 kVA, this caused fuses to blow on UPSs and PLCs boards to fry.”

Traditional static UPS also involved high maintenance costs requiring regular replacement of control boards, fuses, and fans which risked downtime at the manufacturing plants.

Maghreb Emballage employs over 500 people. Its manufacturing sites span over 50,000 sq.mt at sites around Oran.

It invested in its first 1MW UNIBLOCK™ UPS in 2015, then added a further 1MW unit 2018. Along with a separate 560kW unit the latest protection sees the company rely on more than 6MW of Piller protection across its facilities.

Piller is proud to contribute to making the Maghreb Emballage new high performance production facility fully state of the art in order to serve its customers throughout Algeria.

Maghreb Emballage Algeria, production facility.
UNIBLOCK™ 1800kW rotary UPS coupled with Powerbridge 60+ flywheel energy storage.

About Piller

Piller is a global watch-word in power protection equipment for mission-critical power applications. Piller’s clients include many of the world’s leading banks and financial institutions, data centre operators, broadcasters, telecom operators and governmental entities. Founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 1909 by Anton Piller, in 1919 the company moved to its current headquarters and production site in Osterode-am-Harz, near Hanover. Today, Piller has a second production facility at nearby Bilshausen and serves its global markets via own sales and service subsidiaries throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, and Asia and elsewhere in the world via a network of distributor partners. In 2016 Piller acquired Active Power, the Austin Texas based flywheel UPS specialist. The Piller group employs around 1000 people worldwide. Piller is a subsidiary of the diverse, privately owned engineering and industrial group, Langley Holdings plc.


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