Chandeliers from Austria for Mecca
Chandeliers from Austria for Mecca: Contract Worth Over 100 Million Euros
Export. A company from Lower Austria supplies chandeliers for the new pilgrimage complex in Mecca
By Otmar Lahodynsky
November 11, 2013, the largest chandelier measures six meters in diameter and seven meters in height, weighs more than seven tons, and consumes as much electricity as a single-family home. Nine of these gilded giant chandeliers — each costing just under one million euros — are currently being installed in the new marble-clad pilgrimage center next to the old mosque in Mecca.
In total, around 4,700 chandeliers made in Austria in 26 different sizes will illuminate the buildings, which are designed to accommodate three million pilgrims. The major order, worth more than 100 million euros, was awarded a year ago to a largely unknown company from Lower Austria. Consot Unternehmensbeteiligungs-GmbH, a private firm based in Guntramsdorf south of Vienna, once belonged to the Constantia Group of industrialist Herbert Turnauer. After a management buyout, it is now owned by two Austrians and a Saudi businessman.
Under the brand name Lights of Vienna, 80 employees — together with 120 more working for subcontractors — are currently producing chandeliers for the holiest sites of Islam in Saudi Arabia, mainly by hand in the company’s workshops in Guntramsdorf and Bernhardsthal (in the Weinviertel region). Much of the technology and design comes from Dotzauer Kristall-Leuchten in Brunn am Gebirge, which also manufactures the largest chandeliers.
Lights of Vienna won what has been called the world’s largest tender in the decorative lighting sector last year. The contract was awarded by one of the world’s biggest construction companies, the Saudi Binladen Group (SBG), headed by a half-brother of the late Al-Qaeda leader. King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, the official guardian of the holy sites in Mecca and Medina, entrusted SBG with the multibillion-euro reconstruction of the Mecca pilgrimage center.
One of the main reasons the Austrian firm was awarded the contract was its existing references in Saudi Arabia. In the late 1980s, it supplied several chandeliers for the mosque in Medina, and in the 1990s also for the mosque in Mecca.
“There has never been a single complaint,”
says Lights of Vienna CEO Alexander Oborny, who is also one of the three Consot shareholders.
“The clients knew we could meet the high quality requirements.”
The company provides a 50-year warranty on the mechanical parts alone. The tender process required extensive preparation — detailed plans and cost breakdowns for every single component had to be submitted for each chandelier type.
“We worked on that for months,”
Oborny recalls.
The metal parts to be gilded cover an area of around 37,000 square meters, and almost 100 kilograms of gold were used. Specialized companies in Italy and Styria had to install gilding vats up to three meters long.
“Normally, such large parts are never gilded,”
says Oborny.
But no expense was spared for the holiest sites of Islam. The mouth-blown glass parts come from Italy and the Czech Republic, where glassblowers still practice their craft. The sparkling crystals on each chandelier are supplied by Swarovski. The ribbed flat glass panels come from the United States — the only ones that meet the strict safety standards. Like a car windshield, they are designed to shatter into small cubes if broken, to prevent injuries to pilgrims.
How the Austrians landed this massive contract is a story of luck, persistence, and the right connections. In the early 1980s, Oborny traveled to Saudi Arabia as an employee of Teich Aluminium, a Constantia subsidiary, to sell packaging foil. The negotiations were dragging on.
“I was about to leave out of frustration over the high expenses when I got a call from Vienna,”
he recalls. In Jeddah, on the Red Sea, authorities were looking to purchase water meters for measuring drinking water consumption. Oborny arranged for 25,000 units through a Vienna manufacturer — a test order that became his entry into the lucrative Arabian Peninsula market.
His Saudi business partner Nour T. Beydoun — now a one-third owner of the Guntramsdorf company — soon secured the next order: chandeliers worth 50 million schillings (3.5 million euros) for the Medina mosque, at the time in cooperation with the Viennese traditional company Lobmeyr.
Later, Lights of Vienna began producing its own prototypes, which were soon sold to international hotels — from Berlin’s Adlon to the St. Regis in Kuala Lumpur. But it was the massive Mecca construction project — with new mosques, pilgrimage centers, and hotels for up to three million visitors — that brought the breakthrough order. Because of the immense scale of the halls, even chandeliers seven meters tall do not appear ostentatious. The pilgrimage center around the Kaaba is scheduled for completion next summer, in time for the beginning of Ramadan.
Lights of Vienna has contracted several subcontractors, including a lighting technology company in Innsbruck responsible for choosing the light sources. Older-generation energy-saving lamps were used, since modern LEDs emit light considered too cold for mosques.
About half of the chandeliers have already been delivered. Up to five shipping containers per week are sent to Saudi Arabia. Since access to the holy sites is restricted to Muslims, local personnel were hired to install the lights.
Oborny praises the craftsmanship of the partner companies, including Peter Oswald Oberflächentechnik in Styria (gilding) and the high-tech Bartenbach Lichtlabor in Innsbruck.
“It’s precisely thanks to such small and medium-sized enterprises that Austria weathered the global financial crisis relatively well,” says the Lights of Vienna CEO.
The chandelier company is now under time pressure from a new order for hotels and other buildings in the Russian city of Sochi, the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
“At first, clients hesitate forever before making a decision. And then they want everything delivered within a few weeks,” Oborny complains.