New valve service facility in UK for Metso

Metso has opened a new service facility at Seaham, County Durham, UK. The new Metso service centre covers 37,147 square feet of workshop, storage and office space to enhance the service and sales activities for UK customers. In its previous facility, the Metso UK service centre had been operating for over 25 years

The new UK service centre has the capacity and latest technology needed to handle large-scale shutdown turnarounds, general repairs, spare parts, training programmes, field support and diagnostic services. As in all Metso service centres, all repair and overhaul work is carried out according to Metso defined service procedures, and work leaves the service centre with certification and a standard warranty. The centre follows the quality and environmental procedures according to ISO9001 and ISO14000, and all service personnel at the UK service centre are ATEX trained and certified.

The key element in successful and economical valve maintenance is planning. Metso has created a set of services to support valve maintenance and turnaround planning, offering support in Criticality Analysis and an Intelligent Field Survey to help in defining the maintenance plan or scope for the turnaround. The Metso Valve HealthCheck helps to analyse valve diagnostics: a service technician analyses the valve diagnostics regularly, and the condition of the valve is recorded and monitored to help reduce the risk of unplanned breakdowns.

Using the Metso Valve Spares Container helps secure spare part availability: a customised, pre-planned selection of spare parts will be held at the Metso service centre for the turnaround, against a service fee. Any unused parts can be returned according to the contract, and charges are only made according to spare parts consumption. Additionally, the Metso Valve Management Solution is a systematic standardisation of the installed valve base in cooperation with the customer. Currently, there are many customers relying on this service globally, and all of them have chosen to extend the agreement to a longer period with increased scope after having seen the positive impact on maintenance costs, as well as the positive impact on capital tied up in the valve inventories.