ELPA, Environmental management and tribotechnology, Ltd.

About company

ELPA is a Slovenian company specialising in lubrication technique and tribology. ELPA devotes a great deal of time, energy and funding to innovation and development, in particular as regards innovative technological solutions for the purposes of companies faced with extreme operating conditions or machines and devices, such as high temperatures, high pressures, excessive wear and tear, high frequency noise, etc. In developing machines and devices the company deploys state-of-the-art technologies and seek environmentally friendly solutions.
Economic benefits represent another important factor as ELPA's systems significantly reduces not only wear and tear of frictionally contacted surfaces and noise but also vibrations and jolts and with that extends the useful life of frictionally contacted surfaces.

Technology

WONROSTM Technology – registered trade mark

WONROSTM Technology (Wear Out and Noise Reduction On Source), developed and owned by ELPA, eliminates noise on source, caused by friction between two metal surfaces and thus preserves wheels, rails, brakes … from wearing out. Entire technology is built around patented multi rail preserving systems, special heavy duty appliances, designed with rail maintenance, vandalism and energy independence in mind, by using special environmentally friendly CHFC (composite heavily-fluid compounds) materials, applied on sources of noise and for that reducing maintenance costs on rail infrastructure as on railways, tramways, hump yards, shunting stations, classification yards, marshalling yards under Rail Inoperability and Directive on Environmental Noise, as being also awarded by UIC, European Commission for the Environment and certified by TÜV SÜD Rail and SIQ.

WONROSTM Technology is being effective against:

- rail/wheel/brake generated noise
- wear out of interactively burdened metal contact surfaces
- GCC (gauge corner cracking)
- RCF (rolling contact fatigue)
- sinus-line (corrugation)
- etc., where LCC costs at influence area are significantly reduced.

Our business culture
Creating “sustainable value” is our purpose that unites all of us at Elpa. We want to create value – for our customers, for our teams and our people, as well as for the wider society and communities in which our products operate. Our culture and our purpose, vision, mission and values unite our diverse workforce and provide a clear framework and guidance.
Our purpose: Creating sustainable value.
Our vision: Leading with our innovations, brands and technologies.
Our mission: We want to serve our customers and consumers worldwide as the most trusted partner with leading positions in all relevant markets and categories – as a passionate innovative team united by shared values.
Our values: customers and consumers, people, environment, financial performance, sustainability, family, business.


Strategy

We have a clear long-term strategy which is based on our purpose, vision, mission and values. It is the foundation which helps us successfully to shape the future of our company.
By 2022 and beyond, we want Elpa to generate continued profitable growth, to become more customer-focused worldwide and more agile in our internal processes and customer-facing activities. To achieve this ambition, we will focus our strategic priorities and financial ambitions for the coming years. In addition, we aim to promote sustainability in all our business activities.

ever-lasting issue:
As it is known, a lubrication in rail traffic (railways, urban transport, as at infrastructure at the tracks, as at rolling stock at the wheels as well) is an efficient way of reducing the wear and tear of contact parts (wheel / rail / rail brake) and reducing of RFN-rail friction noise at its source of origin as an active manner.
A) Reducing the noise at the source is considered an active noise protection, where various noise barriers are treated (wrongly!) as an active noise protection nowadays, too. Here, active and passive measures should be finally defined and divided professionally (and not as it is now and has been pushed over last years by lobbies).
B) In the field of lubrication there is a big confusion, where the safety of rail traffic is many times under the real question (slippery, braking problems, traction, etc.).
C) Existing standards are not good and do not follow the development.
D) Also, existing standardized test methods do not respond to the current state of development and are largely incorrect as they were overtaken from industrial lubrication (for example: from lubrication of bearings where slippage is desired result, where on the railways it is expected exactly the opposite, but the test method is the same...).
We believe that in this area it would be necessary:
- to critically assess the situation and to innovate existent standards,
- to develop-offer/and afterwards demand/ new test methods for assessing the effects of lubricating techniques (devices together with materials as integrity) in the field of rail transport,
- to define (of profession and not by lobbies) what are active and what are passive noise reduction measures and which are useful as primary
and
- to consider existent lubrication solutions (devices together with materials as integrity) that deliver an extremely high result in nature and are already proven regarding noise and anti-wear effects (measurable!) and are not dangerous for traffic and for people living around the rail sector operations.
We suggest clearing of this “lubrication” area in such a way that standards and methods shall declare such technology that will not cause traffic hazards but will have high noise reduction and anti-wear effects, on examples of already established and on proven good practices from nature. (Where at the R&I projects also selected producers like ELPA shall be involved and not only some academic experts) and where BAT should be declared upon those proceedings (BAT = Best Available Technology).
As we specialise in this area, we believe that solving the above described issue would save lots of money and protect the environment and clarify many up-to now unclear problems.

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No lobbyists with EP accreditations

None declared

Ms Darja Goltnik (CEO)

Ms Darja Goltnik (CEO)

II - In-house lobbyists and trade/business/professional associations

Trade unions and professional associations