Nexans cables at Beijing International Airport

(12/09/2008)

Beijing Airport’s new Terminal 3, which opened in March 2008, has more than doubled the previous capacity of the airport from 30 to 66.5 million passengers per year. Some 330 check-in counters are connected to a 68 km, high-speed, tray-conveyor system. Bags are transported through a 2.2 km tunnel at a speed of 36 km/hour from the check-in counters in Terminal 3A to the loading carousels in International Terminal 3B.

A wide variety of power supply, control, data transmission cables were required to ensure the correct operation of the baggage system, consisting of a combination of high-speed tray conveyors, conveyor belts and tilt-tray sorters, all controlled by a material flow computer.

Nexans has supplied over 2,500 km of power and control cables to China for a total value contract of around 2.6 million euros. These cables play a vital role in the operation of the state-of-the-art baggage handling system in the new Terminal 3 at Beijing International Airport.

Nexans was selected as the sole cable supplier for this project, for several reasons. Firstly, the Nexans cables complied with all the relevant standards for airport applications, including flexibility and halogen free insulation. Moreover, Nexans was able to supply all the different types of cable – power, control and optical. Finally and most importantly, Nexans was able to provide a fast response delivery to meet a truncated construction timescale - where most major projects of this type take around five years, the Beijing Terminal 3 baggage handling system progressed from initial design stage to commissioning in just three years.

The system, installed by Siemens and Inter Roller, is believed to be one of the world’s largest and most modern, with the capability to sort and transport up to 19,200 bags per hour.

The copper cables were manufactured at Nexans plants in Germany, and the optical cables were manufactured by Nexans’ Opticable factory in Belgium.

Related categories:  Cable management system   Cables, conduit and trunking   Network and data cabling