Gemran engineering firm Ferrostaal said that it successfully evacuated more than 700 international employees of Ferrostaal and other companies from Libya. On Tuesday, it said that the last group, consisting of employees from several different sites in the Libyan desert, could leave the country and are to start the homeward journey.
“In addition to about 20 employees from Germany and other European citizens, the majority of the approximately 450 evacuated Ferrostaal employees came from the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. They did the construction of plants for national as well as international operating oil companies in the Libyan desert,” a company statement read.
“The crisis management team at the headquarters of Ferrostaal, Essen in Germany, organised the safest transport routes possible for the evacuation in coordination with employees and partner companies in Libya and in close cooperation with administration, embassies and the German Federal Foreign Office,” the statement continued.
The employees were evacuated by flights from Tripoli, by land to Algeria and Tunisia as well as by a ferry to Malta, especially chartered by Ferrostaal. In an east Libyan oil port a ferry took more than 500 people from different nations on board, 300 of them being Ferrostaal employees. The ferry reached the port of Malta (La Valetta) on Tuesday afternoon. From Malta, the Ferrostaal employees will travel to their home countries by plane. Other passengers were received by their respective embassies.
Facing the successful rescue mission, the Executive Board of Ferrostaal was relieved: “We are very happy that we were able to evacuate all our teams from the different camps as well as from our sites in Tripoli and Brega, most of them under very difficult circumstances”, Jan Secher, Ferrostaal’s chief executive officer said at the end of the evacuation. “We particularly thank the teams, our customers and partners in Libya for their considerateness and their special efforts. Decisive for the success of the different activities was also the close contact to the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the support of further administrations”, Secher added.
In addition to its portofolio of managing various complex projects, Ferrostaal undertakes the engineering, procurement and construction of oil and gas, petrochemical and power generation plants in over 40 countries around the world.
The majority of the shares of Ferrostaal is held by the International Petroleum Investment Company of Abu Dhabi (IPIC – 70%). MAN AG, Germany, is a minority shareholder with 30%.
