Institutional
Durmientes de Uruguay (DDU) is the first Uruguayan company dedicated to the manufacture of concrete railway sleepers (ties) in the country’s railroads history that applies the highest international quality standards in all its processes. Based in Florida province, it was founded in 2019 as the result of a strategic partnership between the Portuguese group Diorama (specialized in precasts for public infrastructure) and the Italian Wegh Group (specialist in automatic plants for the manufacture of sleepers) in the framework of the Uruguayan Central Railway project. With an initial investment of 15 million dollars, DDU has a modern industrial plant and a production capacity of 100 precast and prestressed concrete sleepers per hour, manufactured to European quality standards.
Values
It is a company with a strong commitment to sustainable development, respect for human rights, gender equality, environmental care, transparency and work values.
Guiding principles
- Economic, social and environmental development.
- Work as a value.
- Business sustainability.
- Response, satisfaction and compliance to customers in terms of quality, time and price.
- Commitment to prevention, health care and safety of all the people who are part of Durmientes de Uruguay.
- Gender equality: respect and promotion of equal opportunities.
- Environmental care in all processes.
- Respect for all current legal regulations in relation to the rights of workers, as well as in environmental and quality matters.
- Continuous training: integrated management system.
Plant
The 10-hectare plant installed in Florida province and its innovative carousel-type system ensures technological and productive efficiency. The advantage of this system is that it ensures exact compliance with production parameters: the production capacity of DDU is 1.6 km of track per day.
Logistics
DDU has a robust management and logistics capacity both nationally and internationally, verified through the successful execution of the Uruguayan Central Railway project, which implied the transport of more than 100,000 tons of aggregates and more than 25,000 tons of cement both nationally and internationally, including the import of more than 3,300 tons of special steel for prestressing.
Our sleepers for the Uruguay Central Railway project
The sleeper DDU produces for the project is a prestressed concrete Monoblock one.
Given the high quality standards (European Standard EN 13230-6) under which the sleepers are manufactured, solid traceability processes were developed, both for the materials and for each procedure in the production chain, to ensure the structural strength required for the railroad.
The DDU production plant is highly reconfigurable and its capacity to design and calculate sleepers allows it to manufacture and guarantee any type of sleeper or railway component for any load and speed needed.
Around 90% of the raw materials used in the manufacture of sleepers are of Uruguayan origin. They have a useful life of between 25 and 30 years, unlike those made of wood or steel, which, depending on their use and maintenance, have a substantially shorter useful life.
The sleepers are made with High Initial Resistance cement (HIR), a material that was used for the first time in Uruguay for the construction of the Centenario Stadium: the national and global football monument which was built in six months in time to be inaugurated for the 1930 and first ever FIFA World Cup.
Almost 90 years later, thanks to Durmientes de Uruguay, HIR cement is used again in the country and mark a new milestone: 600,000 concrete sleepers were produced in 18 months for the Uruguayan Central Railway project, a 273-kilometre railway line linking the town of Paso de los Toros with the capital, Montevideo.