ALSTOM Hydro Austria GmbH, with a 60-percent share heavily export-oriented, concentrates its business efforts on the emerging markets in Eastern Europe. The company, operating successfully in countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina for many years, specialises in the construction of new hydropower plants as well as in the restoration of existing ones.

But as ALSTOM chief executive Wolfgang Kölliker knows from his own experience much patience and perseverance is needed until a contract is awarded: “It often takes an incredibly long time for a project to be implemented in practice. The Jablanica hydropower restoration project, for instance, took even ten years to finalise!

But with patience and insight into the local environment and its political and social constraints, we finally won this contract as well.” With support through a loan from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), until 2001 the first three machine elements in this important hydropower project for Bosnia could be renewed.

The follow-up project for the restoration of the three remaining machine elements, solely financed with Bosnian money, was also awarded to ALSTOM. This clearly shows how much the company’s competence is trusted. After the conclusion of the project in March 2008, Jablanica will produce 22 percent more electricity, thus supplying clean energy to an additional 100,000 households.

In the framework of a bilateral agreement between Austria and Bosnia–Herzegovina, ALSTOM also invests much effort into future energy-sector projects. Wolfgang Kölliker believes that the biggest potential lies in the restoration of existing plants: “This country is also compelled to gear up for Europe, especially in terms of efficiency, automation and compatibility with European standards.”
(Source: aqua press Int. 3/2006)