Cegelec


Cegelec is a French engineering company specialized in electrical infrastructure, HVAC, information technology, nuclear energy development, transport infrastructure, robotics and offering both public and private services. Cegelec was officially formed in 1989, and as of 2014 the company employs around 22,000 people and operates in 30 countries, with major activity in France, Brazil, Indonesia, the Middle East and Africa. It was acquired by Vinci Energies on 14 April 2010, assimilating the collection of Cegelec's sub-companies, which each specialize in a specific field or geographical region, into Vinci's corporate system.

History

In 1913 the company Compagnie Générale d'Entreprises Électriques was established by the Compagnie Générale d'Electricité.
In 1971 it was renamed CGEE-Alstom. In 1989 CGE and General Electric Company formed the joint operation GEC-Alstom, and CGEE-Alstom was renamed Cegelec. In 1999 Cegelec became Alstom Entreprise and Alstom Contracting.
On 20 July 2001 Alstom Contracting was subject to a Leveraged Management Buyout supported by Caisse des dépôts et consignations and Charterhouse Capital Partners, and was renamed Cegelec.
The company was acquired by private equity fund LBO France in 2006. In 2008 Qatari Diar became the majority shareholder. In September 2009, Cegelec was purchased by Vinci.
In 2014, Cegelec adopted the Actemium brand name.

Organisation

After Vinci's acquisition of the company from Qatari Diar in 2010, Cegelec's organisation and operation under the Cegelec company title did not change; Vinci's energy and engineering divisions have assisted Cegelec endeavors but have not actively changed the organisational structure of Cegelec.
Cegelec is split into 15 separate sub-companies, which are all owned by the overarching Cegelec company known as Cegelec Enterprise. After the acquisition, the administration and direction of each company were controlled by Vinci Energies, yet each sub-company maintained their original specializations. The following are all the Cegelec sub-companies listed on Cegelec.com as of 17/April/2020 :

France

From the 2010 Cegelec Financial Report, 58.1% of Cegelec's total sales were made within France, the country which contains the highest diversity of Cegelec’s operations, hosting their nuclear, marine, defense and the largest amount of electrical engineering/transport sub-companies. Cegelec’s international headquarters are in Saint-Denis, acting as the central hub for Cegelec’s international interactions. One of their recent contracts in France was the assignment “to design remote handling equipment for France’s proposed underground repository” in 2014. This contract was estimated to be valued at €20 million and took approximately four years to complete.

Rest of Europe

Excluding France, the rest of Europe constituted 26% of annual sales in 2010, with countries closer to France yielding higher revenue. Operations in each nation vary from team to team, with countries like the Netherlands and the Czech Republic having their websites in the local language and conducting business independently of the broader Cegelec brand name.
List of countries in which Cegelec has been involved in Europe since 2010 :
Cegelec’s operations in Africa are focused on developing/managing electrical and transport infrastructure, with countries involved generally putting forth specific contracts in their individual requests. Some of such contracts include management of the electrification of the 18 km long tram line in Rabat, Morocco, in 2008, which officials commissioned to connect the inner and outer bounds of the capital city. In 2010, Cameroon's Société Nationale de Raffinage contracted Cegelec to refit and redevelop Cameroon’s national oil refinery. With the refinery’s last upgrade in the late 1970s, Cegelec was offered €25 million to implement modern pneumatic technology and completely redesign the safety features and protocols of the refinery. This contract lasted 18 months and resulted in the refinery raising its efficiency and meeting modern safety standards.
List of countries in which Cegelec has been involved in Africa:
Beginning in the early 2000s, the Middle East’s oil and gas supply entered the world economy, increasing regional GDP by 32% for local involved countries, who then employed offshore companies to assist the management of the new supply. Cegelec became involved on account of their engineering and safety system services, with one such assignment from the Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Limited contracting them to “design, supply and install new integrated control systems for the gas liquefaction plants of Bab and Adab”. The contract was priced at $72 million USD for a time frame of 28 months, and was completed in mid-2007.
List of countries in which Cegelec has been involved in the Middle East :
List of countries in which Cegelec has been involved in the rest of the world :
As an engineering company, Cegelec has contributed to the global community in the fields of nuclear engineering, electrification logistics, robotics, infrastructure, information systems and safety systems. Developments in which they have participated include a programmable safety protection system, which was one of the centrepieces of nuclear reactor safety protocols and controllers in 1999. The code base and core components of this system have been integrated into modern nuclear plants, which Cegelec has been contracted to develop, maintain and innovate for clients. They own various patents on energy technology that have since been incorporated into current energy sources. Two such patents that pertain to renewable energy include design components for a wave energy converter and a variable speed converter for wind turbines, put forth at the 1997 IEEE Colloquium, and implemented in later projects. Cegelec designed and implemented a common DC bus fed inverter for the wave energy power generator known as the OSPREY project, a new generation of international, modular wave energy generators; Cegelec’s role in this project was regulating the electrical output of each generator and maximizing conversion efficiency. For wind turbines, Cegelec developed a product called Alspa GD4000, a “bi-directional 45 kW power electronic variable speed driver and controller,” used for integrating generators and flywheel systems within wind turbines. Both patents and consequent projects center around electrical energy conversion and provided a foundation for future advances in both wave and wind energy technology, fields which are generally not as profitable for Cegelec as nuclear, coal, and electrical infrastructure work.
International, large-scale scientific projects that Cegelec has been invited to work in include the two below:
The first is their participation in the ITER fusion program starting in 2016, known as Fusion For Energy, in which they have been employed to design, produce, operate and maintain remote handling equipment to function within the fusion reactor. According to World Nuclear News, Fusion For Energy is the “world's largest experimental nuclear fusion facility,” and is at the forefront of the scientific community in the field of fusion energy; Cegelec’s involvement in the first Cask and Plus Remote Handling System of this size is one of Cegelec’s most globally renowned nuclear projects.
In 2017, they were contracted to by the Centre National d’Études Spatiales to remodel and create cryogenic interfaces operating between Ariane 6 rocket launch systems and the ground systems in French Guiana. The CNES aimed to horizontally integrate the entire launcher system for the first time in the Ariane space programs history, tasking Latecoere Services, Air Liquide and Cegelec to allow fuelling arms to operate efficiently within this system.