The wine-tank park of Garcia Carrión in southern Spain will be home to cutting-edge tanks, built with Outokumpu’s LDX 2101® and 2304 Duplex stainless steels by a leading Spanish stainless tank fabricator, Martinez Sole y Cia.
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Garcia Carrión’s new wine storage tanks. The roof and Level 1 (uppermost level) are built out of Duplex stainless steel, with 2E surface.
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Modern wine making and stainless steel go hand in hand: today stainless is practically the exclusive tank and piping material from fermentation to the storage of table wine. However, the well-established partnership between wine and stainless is going through some ground-breaking changes in terms of stainless grades.
Two austenitic grades have dominated in wine storage tanks: EN 1.4301 (ASTM 304), and 1.4404 (316L) in the uppermost section and roof. The more corrosion resistant 1.4404 is used to prevent pitting corrosion at tank tops caused by sulfides, which are added to tanks to prevent conversion of wine to acid. The two austenitic grades are used cold rolled, with smooth 2B surface to allow easy washing, and hot rolled with 1D surface where higher strength for structural purposes is needed.
In 2006, wine producer Garcia Carrión, the self-proclaimed leader in the Spanish wine market and an exporter, joined forces with one of Spain’s leading tank fabricators, Martinez Sole y Cia, to build 66 new storage tanks at the Garcia Carrión production facility in Daimiel, southern Spain. The traditional stainless combination 1.4301/1.4404 presented a challenge: soaring nickel prices put the price of new tanks very high. |
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Outokumpu has for years been supplying Spain’s tank makers with stainless steel products that enable cutting-edge product engineering, specifically 2-meter-wide coil and Duplex grades. Outokumpu’s Spanish sales and technical team explained to Martinez Sole how Outokumpu’s Duplex grades, both the proprietary LDX 2101® and 2304, could provide a solution: the low nickel content of these grades, 1.5% and 4.8% respectively, would bring major cost savings while providing equal or better corrosion resistance than 1.4301 and 1.4404. Additional savings would come from the high strength of all Duplex grades, which allows for thinner gauges. As a result, Martinez Sole could use thinner, either hot or cold rolled coil instead of thicker hot rolled material. Convinced, Martinez Sole is building the world’s first wine storage tanks for Garcia Carrión using Duplex stainless steel: LDX 2101® and 2304 are used to build the roof and uppermost level of all new tanks. In addition to all Duplex, 520 tons, Outokumpu is supplying all austenitic stainless steel for the project.
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Potential wall thickness reduction using Duplex stainless steel compared with austenitic. | |
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Project facts
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| Project |
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Expansion of a wine-tank park in Daimiel (Ciudad Real), Spain
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Owner
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Garcia Carrión, S.A.
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Tank fabricator
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Martinez Sole y Cia, S.A.
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Tanks |
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53 tanks for wine, 12 tanks for unfermented grape juice
13120 mm in diameter, 16000 mm in height
Tank materials from Outokumpu:
520 tons of LDX 2101® (EN 1.4162) and 2304 (EN 1.4362) Duplex stainless steel in 2000 mm wide coil, 4.0 mm in thickness
2065 tons of EN 1.4301 (ASTM 304) austenitic stainless steel, 2000 mm wide CPP, 4.0–12.5 mm in thickness
44 tons of 1.4301 quarto plates, 2000 mm wide, 12.8 mm in thickness
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For more information, contact
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Enrique Pino Jimenez
Sales Manager
Outokumpu, S.A., Madrid, Spain
Tel. +34 916 281 897
Email: enrique.pino@outokumpu.com |