Wire and cable manufacturer Lake Cable plans to invest $7 million to expand its Valparaiso plant.

Per a report in the Times of Northwest Indiana, Lake Cable, a privately held wire and cable manufacturing that employs 450 workers at five plants, including three in Indiana, plans to add 82,000 sq ft to its 126,000-sq-ft plant in Valparaiso. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

"Fourteen years after expanding into Valparaiso, we are excited and optimistic about the way our business is growing and developing," Lake Cable President Emile Tohme said in the report. The business was founded by Bill Runzel IV in the 1990s on the west side of Chicago with just three wire-making machines and a total of four people.

Today, Lake Cable manufactures a variety of cables for the utility, renewable energy, commercial construction, petrochemical, transit, HVAC, fire alarm, building management system, steel, and industrial sectors. Once the expansion is done, plans call for up to 54 new workers to be hired.

Taiwan-based Admiral Cable announced plans to extend its manufacturing operations to New Mexico, where it will investing $50 million to build a 65,000-sq-ft facility in Santa Teresa as the first phase of expansion.

Per multiple published reports citing the office of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the project will not be completed until early 2020, at which time the facility will be 175,000 sq ft. The company, which makes assembled electrical cords and power supplies and other industrial cables and wires, expects to hire 342 employees.

The governor said in the statement that she was able to connect with Admiral Cable last summer on a trip to Taiwan and the relationship developed from there. The state will provide up to $3.92 million in Local Economic Development Act funding for the expansion.

“Admiral Cable is excited to on-shore domestic manufacturing capacity in New Mexico,” T. C. Huang, chairman and CEO of I-sheng Electric Wire & Cable, a majority shareholder of Admiral Cable, said in a statement. “Santa Teresa affords us greater proximity to our customers with efficient market access, supply chain efficiencies and high-quality labor.”

Huang said that the state was an attractive place for the expansion. New Mexico’s strong business climate for manufacturers makes for a very compelling value proposition. “With a competitive total cost of operations, we can compete with foreign-made product right here from Santa Teresa. We thank Governor Martinez and her entire team for their professionalism and support through our site selection process.”

China’s Hengtong recently commemorated a significant subsea power cable accomplishment that it reported represents an industry milestone.

A press release said that on Nov. 26, 2018, the "Hengtong Overseas 10,000 km Submarine Optical Cable Delivery Ceremony" was held in Changshu, Jiangsu Province. The event celebrated Hengtong’s manufacturing and delivering nearly 3,000 km of submarine optical cable. The cable was supplied for use in Chile’s Fibre Optic Austral (FOA) subsea cable system, which will run along the coast of Chile, connecting Puerto Montt with Puerto Williams, with two branches to Tortel and Punta Arenas. With that production, the company achieved accumulative overseas deliveries of 10,000 km of submarine optical cables.

"This ranks Hengtong first in the world in both capacity and delivery to the domestic submarine optical cable market," the release said. "This is a milestone in China’s submarine cable industry and highlights the ‘made in China’ drive in the field of international oceanic communications."

During the event, Qian Jianlin, executive president of Hengtong Group, said that Hengtong was committed to creating a submarine industry supply chain of integrating product, engineering and operation service to promote the implementation of the "One Belt and One Road" initiative and contribute to global connections.

In the past five years, Hengtong has built a global-leading submarine optical cable R&D production base, includ-ing a system integration, testing center and a dock cabling system, making Hengtong one of the leading submarine optical cable companies, both at home and abroad, the release said. It added that the company has also introduced a number of new products, including two-stage composite cables for application in marine disaster prevention pre-warning networks.

Hengtong notes that it now has 10 manufacturing facilities based in China, Europe, South America, South Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, with sales offices in more than 30 countries and regions that supply products and service to over 140 countries.

Nexans reports that it has been awarded a turnkey contract worth more than 100 million euros for a submarine cable link to reinforce the national grid of the Philippines.

A press release said that the order is from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), which is looking to unify and reinforce the national grid with the launch of the Mindanao Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP). The goal is connect the three power grids of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao into one unified national grid by 2020.

The release said that Nexans will provide 350 kV high-voltage direct current (HVDC) mass-impregnated (MI) submarine cable in water depths up to 650 m for the submarine link. To optimize the delivery of the submarine cabling system for the MVIP, Nexans will leverage its global manufacturing footprint. The 350 kV submarine MI cable will be manufactured in Nexans’ Nippon High Voltage Cable Corporation plant in Futtsu, Japan, as well as in its Halden plant in Norway. The installation and protection works will be performed by Nexans’ cable laying vessel, the C/S Nexans Skagerrak.

"Nexans is delighted to once again be trusted by NGCP, building on a number of projects the Group has successfully completed in the region," said Vincent Dessale, Senior Executive Vice President Nexans Subsea and Land Systems Business Group.

Per the release, in the last 15 years, power consumption in Philippines has increased by almost 80%, with 2017 use estimated at more than 94,370 GWh

Italy’s Danieli Group reports that production has begun for the new high-speed wire rod mill it supplied to Acciaierie di Verona (the Pittini Group) that represents the 500th rolling mill the company has now supplied.

A press release at the Danieli website reports that the first coil was recently produced, some 19 months after the contract signature. “The timely start-up and the following hot-test period of seven weeks, during which 25.000 tons of finished wire rod in quality have been produced, reflects the long-term cooperation between the Pittini Group and Danieli,” it said.

Regarding the rolling mill, it was designed to hold strict end-product size tolerances, employing the most advanced wire-rod technology and in full compliance with Industry 4.0 requirements, the release said. It noted that the plant is capable of annually producing 750,000 metric tons (mt) of plain wire rod from 5.5 to 25 mm and rebar from 6 to 18 mm at rolling speed of 100 m/sec, and further outlined the capabilities as follows.

The mill has a high-speed rougher feeding two independent rolling lines that consist of cantilever roll stands, featuring quick roll changes and temperature control along the mill and downstream. High-speed shears, installed downstream the multi-drive, high-speed, twin-module sizing blocks, perform wire-rod head and tail cropping. The fourth-generation loop layers guarantee extended pipe life, quick rotor changes, and no vibration during rolling, resulting perfect loops from heads to tails.  The variable-pitch cooling conveyor features modular slow-to-ultrafast cooling.

 The Danieli Automation Q3 Intelligence system is used for integrated data collection of the whole plant, analysis, and web reporting with Key Performance Indicators and powerful statistical tools to support decision making. The new plant automation ensures consistent product quality consistency, high utilization factor and yield, and workshop coordination, and establishes a link to “Big Data” and plant digitalization practices.