'With the help of KH Engineering, we can respond to market changes at lightning speed'

Augustin Raicu

In the storage and transshipment business for today's fuel market, flexibility and being able to quickly respond to market developments and customer demand are crucial. Eurotank Amsterdam (ETA) knows all about that. The company (part of VTTI) does everything in its power to grow along with the wishes coming from both market and society. They regularly ask for the help of KH Engineering in doing so.

‘KH Engineering is currently helping us with two projects,' says Engineering Manager Augustin Raicu of Eurotank Amsterdam (ETA). ‘The first is now in the detail engineering phase and concerns our project at tank pit H93. With this project, we are ensuring that we can bring our truck loading facility back into use. And we are making our jetties suitable for on-site blending and offloading to barges. When this project is completed, we will be able to optimally serve an important new customer. We will soon start the implementation phase and aim to be ready before the end of the year. In this way we will have quickly met a new customer demand from the market.'

Biofuels

The second project is in the Front-end Engineering Design (FEED) phase and is also closely related to a new market development. Here it is about biofuels. These are becoming increasingly important, now and in the future. More and more tank terminal owners are responding to this. Augustin: ‘We want to make part of our terminal suitable for the storage, blending and loading of biofuels. This is a major project: not only do two tank pits containing 17 tanks need to be revamped, but another tank pit is being refurbished where another six tanks are being made suitable for reuse.'

Environmental benefits

An important challenge in this project was to create the ideal conditions for the storage of biofuels. The liquid must be kept warm. Augustin: ‘After studying various possibilities, KH Engineering came up with a wonderful out-of-the-box solution. A nearby power station has enough residual heat to provide the required heat via hot water and a heat exchanger. That way, we have environmental benefits across the board'.

Approach

According to Augustin, the choice for KH Engineering did not come out of the blue. ‘They have been working here for many years, and that is no coincidence. They simply fit in well with us. We always want to be able to respond quickly to customer requests and market developments, and KH Engineering is cut from the same cloth. They are flexible, can switch quickly and think along with us. They are also always enthusiastic. We are both averse to bureaucracy and like to get things done. As far as I'm concerned, it's a good match!’

For more information about Eurotank (Amsterdam): www.vtti.com/terminal/eta-the-netherlands/