A workplace with a vision: Our latest and most modern production building, Zephyr Ost

Our site in Zug is constantly developing. After its completion, we were able to gradually move into our pioneering “Zephyr Ost” building at the start of 2024. The newbuild is located between the “Zephyr Hangar” and the “Mistral” and is the final link completing the vertical factory.  

“Zephyr Ost” offers space for manufacturing and assembly, office and recreational areas across five floors and is equipped with an automated pallet warehouse. The warehouse is ideally positioned across several floors in the low-light core of the building. Around it are the production spaces and recreation rooms with floor-length windows, which ensures optimum lighting conditions. The vertical arrangement of production across several floors enables natural lighting on all levels. This is a motivating factor for our employees at “Zephyr Ost” because, unlike in traditional production buildings, here they have a fantastic outside view that stretches far into the distance. What’s more, the light and open lounge-style breakroom highlights the modern workplace design and contributes to the wellbeing of our employees.

Like the other buildings at the Zug site, “Zephyr Ost” is connected to the Multi Energy Hub, which allows us to cool and heat the interior of the building using CO-free district heating and enables a pleasant indoor climate year-round, including in the assembly and production spaces. But “Zephyr Ost” also generates renewable electricity itself: we have installed a photovoltaic system on the flat roof that feeds an anticipated rated output of 282 kWp (kilowatt peak) into the electricity grid.  

We also prioritised transformative production and service areas as well as state-of-the-art logistics systems and production facilities when installing equipment in the building. For instance, our new vacuum cleaning system features two vacuum chambers where sheet metal parts are cleaned in a closed system using modified alcohol. Unlike the predecessor model, considerably less energy is lost during the cleaning process, and the entire production process is more energy-efficient. What’s more, straightforward separation of alcohol and dirt remnants means no water is required and, in turn, vast quantities of dirty wastewater are prevented. Another advantage of the new system is that it eliminates the need to manually hang the sheet metal parts to be cleaned, with this now being done automatically using special containers, which saves time. We have also switched from pneumatic to more energy-efficient electric screwdrivers in our production and assembly processes at “Zephyr Ost”. In addition to the energy advantages, the electrically powered screwdrivers also produce lower noise emissions, contributing to increased comfort for our employees.

The pioneering building also features a pallet warehouse with optimised intralogistics, which has allowed us to reduce the number of electric forklifts required. In addition to this, we have implemented a new hazardous substance warehouse concept, improving the storage and handling of hazardous substances in four special zones. We prioritised sustainability right from the outset with the building fabric of “Zephyr Ost”, too: the building is made from Holcim recycled concrete and retains CO2 on a long-term basis thanks to a pioneering method developed by ETH startup Neustark. Hollow-core fixtures in the concrete reduced the material requirements and thus the carbon footprint of the building. “This site transformation has seen V-ZUG take an important step towards future sustainability. Not only are we considerably reducing our environmental impact, but we’re also offering a pleasant working environment and boosting the appeal of V-ZUG as an employer. Having the opportunity to be involved in this and implement a variety of sustainability aspects in these projects is just fantastic,” says Markus Estermann, Head of Automation and Transformation at V-ZUG.