Bieri Tenta builds transport containers for Ariane 6 rocket
Grosswangen/Volketswil/Zurich - In collaboration with a metal construction firm, Bieri Tenta developed unique container systems featuring sophisticated tarpaulin covers for Beyond Gravity, the aerospace group based in Zurich. These containers are being used to transport sensitive components of the payload fairing for the ESA’s Ariane 6 rocket.
Bieri Tenta has handled an order for Beyond Gravity. In the first instance, the mechanical engineering company Novita Engineering from Volketswil in the Swiss canton of Zurich awarded the contract for the container units including covers. In a report, Bieri describes the requirements as posing a real challenge: It had to ensure quick and easy assembly and disassembly, come up with a snow-resistant design and offer transportability by truck and ship. In conjunction with Moderne Metallbearbeitung GmbH, which like Bieri is based in Grosswangen in the canton of Lucerne, various potential solutions were developed and refined into concrete execution plans. In the end, the order for the container units was placed at the end of 2025.
However, as the report explains, it was only later in the order processing stage that it became clear who the end customer actually was: Beyond Gravity. It also emerged that the intended use of the containers was to transport the two halves of a payload fairing, i.e. the protective shell at the tip of a rocket that protects fragile cargo such as satellites of space probes from extreme stress during launch, for the Ariane 6 rocket of the European Space Agency (ESA). The containers were transported to the Port of Basel via a special shipment. "From there, the journey continues by ship", Bieri writes in the statement, "for example, to the U.S. or Japan".
Upon arrival, the entire container unit can be dismantled within a few hours and transported using standard shipping containers to save space back to Beyond Gravity’s site in Emmen in the canton of Lucerne. The project, which was initially highly confidential in nature, saw the involvement of numerous Bieri teams, ranging from graphics and painting to assembly and scheduling departments, as well as the German subsidiary Bieri Zeltaplan. Bieri writes in a statement that the project shows how "well-engineered designs not only offer protection but also increase the efficiency of entire transport chains – and ultimately can even pave the way to space".
