Austria’s Felbermayr has delivered more than 34,000 freight tons worth of material – or around 1,600 packages – for the Mintia gas and steam power station in Romania. Slated for completion in late summer 2025, the company has already delivered three generators, transformers and turbines to the site.
With Felbermayr’s preparatory work taking just under a year, the first major components were transported to the power station in May and June 2024. “The project was a major challenge both technically and logistically, since the power station is located more than 250 km away from all navigable waterways,” commented Peter Niedermair-Auer, project manager of Felbermayr’s Wels project department.
Two dismanteld gas turbines – with a largest part measuring 13.7 m x 3.6 m and weighing 150 tonnes – arrived from Berlin. The components were transferred to another inland shipping vessel at the port of Linz, Austria, and transported to Budapest. They were placed on low-loaders at the port of Csepel in Budapest, before being transported to Mintia power station. The gas turbines each came in 12 packages, with eight transports per turbine necessary.
Picked up from Mühlheim, Germany, in April 2025, the steam turbine was transhipped in Linz and transported to Hungary’s Szeged. Here, it was dismantled and sent to Mintia with several loads of accessories. The heaviest part weighed 150 tonnes and measured 9.9 m x 6 m x 3.9 m.
“We had to overcome the usual challenges on Romanian and Hungarian roads, such as old bridges and narrow through roads. We had to carry out a lot of structural calculations and route tests in advance,” added Niedermair-Auer. “The project would not have been possible in this way without the local support of Eszter Balog in Hungary and Marius Tudose in Romania.”
HLPFI reported earlier this year that Felbermayr had delivered two generators from Charleston, USA to Europe at the start of 2025. Shortly after, it shipped a third – with each weighing around 380 tonnes. Felbermayr carried out the largest road haulage operation in Hungary’s history with this, with several route inspections carried out and the size and weight of the transport seeing signs dismantled, trees cut, and bridges shored up.
In February 2025, the large transformers with unit weights of up to 313 tonnes were shipped from China to Romania’s Constanta, on the Black Sea. From there, they were transported to Tape, Hungary via the Danube and Tisza rivers. They were transported to Makó on SPMTs. One transformer was loaded onto a side girder bridge at the transhipment point there, while the other two arrived at Mintia on a Goldhofer 24-axle THP/FT trailer.
Five of the six generators and transformers were installed on foundations by Felbermayr’s engineered solutions division. The two generators for the gas turbines had to be reloaded onto a 10-axle four-file SPMT using a 500-tonne lifting frame and then moved to the foundations, with the latter positioned using a lifting frame a track made of 36 m of rail.
As the generator for the steam turbine had not yet been placed on the foundation, it was unloaded using a lifting frame and set down momentarily in a storage area. The pair of transformers for the gas turbine were delivered to the site using a 24-axle low loader and placed under the lifting frame. Then, they were pushed to the foundation using a 400-tonne shifting system and put on the foundation using four 150-tonne climbing jacks. To facilitate this, Felbermayr’s engineered solutions team built a 3 m-wide pit between the unloading point and the foundation with supports and beams, Niedermair-Auer noted.
The transformer for the steam turbine was placed on the shifting girders using the hydraulics of the side girder bridge, and a girder of the side girder bridge had to be removed to push the transformer into its final position. It was then pushed onto the foundation with the shifting track and set down with stepped jacks.
“Thanks to our multimodal competence – on the road, water and rail – as well as our Europe-wide network, we were able to successfully complex this complex project,” said Niedermair-Auer.
The Mintia coal-fired power station is projected to be converted into a gas and steam power station by 2026, and its 1,700 MW of installed capacity will make it the largest of its kind in the EU once commissioned.
Last month, HLPFI reported that Felbermayr had been on hand for a flood gate installation of the port of Linz.
