‘Facilitate the basic needs’ is ARPA’s main goal and what they’ve been doing since 1968, when the company was founded in Zaragoza by Antonio Arpa Romero. Since then, company activity didn’t stop growing. From the capital of Aragón, Spain, ARPA has delivered mobile equipment to every corner of the world.
ARPA started as a company dedicated to improve the feeding conditions of the Spanish Army. Nowadays it offers solutions that embrace every kind of need everywhere in the world, not only for the defence sector, but also for the civil service sector, health, WASH, emergencies and catastrophes and telecommunications.
ARPA’s advantage compared to other companies in the sector is that they offer complete solutions, integrated in different platforms and produced 100% in Spain. Projects are turn-key tailored made and the guarantee of having everything that is needed where it’s needed it’s a value that ARPA has in the DNA since the beginning, endorsed by 50 years of experience with great knowledge and dedication from all the professionals that work in ARPA.
The company exports to more than 60 countries and offers solutions to any client worldwide. Clients range from armies, supranational organisations, construction companies, mining and united nations agencies. ARPA’s solutions contemplate every single aspect to develop an activity in remote areas.
ARPA is now achieving 50 years in the market and the celebration started last April with a series of events taking place in their facilities in La Muela, Spain.
The event took place over two weeks, in which individuals from the civil, military, health and government sectors were able to visit the facilities with a permanent exhibition of a field hospital, an exhibition of the evolution of the company for a more thorough knowedge of its history, and a deployment of the last of the hospitals destined for Saudi Arabia. The celebration will end in May 2018.
Among the visitors are the senior commanders of the land army and airforce, the EMU, ambassadors from different countries of the African continent and South America, the chief of health services of the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and the president of Aragón, Javier Lambán, among others.
ARPA’s great exporting work has been present in its DNA since 1968 and won the 2016 Chamber of Commerce of Zaragoza Export Prize, as in 1982. Three of the projects carried out by the company this year include:
- 373 fridge-freezers and 68 kitchens for Algerian Ministry of Defense
- Emergency towing kits for Colombia that contain water treatment plants, generators, flexible tanks and tents
- The supply of seven truck hospitals to Saudi Arabia (the largest contract signed in the history of field hospitals for € 140m)
ARPA has developed hospitals in just 13 months, and now will also be dedicated to their maintenance.
ARPA, to date, exports 100% of its production to almost 60 countries. Thanks to the company’s 50 years of experience, it has been possible to supply basic quality resources in warzone areas or places devastated by natural catastrophes.
As a finishing touch to a good year for ARPA, Clara Arpa, CEO, was invited by the royal house to accompany her Majesty Felipe VI, along with several Spanish companies, to Saudi Arabia.
ARPA not only develop good commercial work, but also carry out research and development (R&D) projects that place ARPA at the forefront in terms of technological innovations. The department is constantly working with the UN’s sustainable development goals in mind so that ARPA solutions and systems are increasingly efficient and effective. Designing and developing new solutions for deployments or situations of need in remote locations where basic needs, such as water, are difficult to get.
The development of new desalination plants that run on photovoltaic energy, wastewater treatment plants that do not need electricity, atmospheric water generators that can provide from 50 litres (l) to 10,000l per day of drinking water, more efficient distribution systems and consumer equipment.
Overall, everything necessary to have a complete water cycle that works autonomously and independently in remote areas is just one of the projects for sustainable development that the R&D team has recently completed.
ARPA is currently involved in tenders for helicopter hangars, peace camps in Colombia, hospitals in Kuwait, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as housing reconstruction in Ecuador.