![]() “It’s a much thinner wall than in Europe or the U.S. In addition, reinforced concrete pipe in Australia is typically thin-walled compared with pipe in Europe or the United States, Mørch said. Electricity costs in this area of Australia are becoming very expensive per kilowatt hour. The ePak is very efficient in kilowatt hour per pipe, resulting in lower electricity costs.” “All-electric meant that we didn’t have large hydraulic power packs running for long periods using electricity. ![]() “The main reason we went with the ePak system, apart from the pricing and the service package HawkeyePedershaab provided us with, was the energy efficiency due to the fact the machine is all-electric,” Bates added. “I am very mechanically minded, so the whole ePak system was very attractive to me because of its compact design and its energy efficiency,” he said. The ePak’s technology made a lot of sense to Bates. In addition, as a fully electric machine, the ePak is energy efficient and requires less maintenance. So, in that sense it is not to be compared with any other packerhead machine.” It has a direct drive based on two permanent magnetic motors. “What is special is the machine design and the controls, Mørch said. Packerhead technology has been around for 70 or 80 years, Mørch said, but the difference in the HawkeyePedershaab ePak system is its advanced engineering. “When they saw how fast it operated, how smooth it was, from that point on they didn’t want any other technology,” Mørch said.īen Bates’ background as an engineer may have helped steer him toward the ePak. While researching pipe-producing machines, Bates contacted Torben Mørch, a HawkeyePedershaab sales representative, who works out of the company’s Brønderslev, Denmark, office. “But there are lots of new construction projects and a lot of urban development happening around our area – in Geelong and Victoria – and we had to expand.” ![]() “We started in 1995 with a wet spin plant that we built ourselves, and over the years it served us well,” Bates said. Commissioning the ePak would be a dramatic change for the Bates team. The ePak drycast method produces pipe that can be immediately demolded and moved – either manually or robotically. With the wet spin technique, the concrete cures in the mold, which slows down the process considerably. It makes a nice pipe but it’s a very, very slow method compared to the ePak.” You put them on a set of horizontal rollers and spin them, using the centrifugal force to push the concrete to the outside. “It was used all around the world,” he said. Bates Pipe and Products was manufacturing pipe horizontally, using the traditional Australian “wet spin” method.Īustralians invented wet spin pipe production in about 1910, Bates said. ![]() ![]() The ePak 150 employs packerhead technology to cast the pipe vertically. The difference? An ePak 150 from HawkeyePedershaab, part of the Afinitas family of concrete equipment and technology companies. In determining how to modernize the plant, Ben Bates landed on a solution that turned the company 90 degrees – from horizontal to vertical, so to speak. Clearly, they were leaving money on the table. Up the road, Melbourne is flat out booming, adding nearly a million people between 20 to bring its population to 4.9 million.īen and Bob knew they were making decent pipe and underground precast products, but the pace of growth in the region outstripped their capacity. A port city on Corio Bay, 75 kilometers (47 miles) southwest of Melbourne, Geelong has been steadily growing. As the founders of Bates Pipes and Products, they were churning out wetcast concrete pipe, box culverts and other underground infrastructure products from their base in Geelong, Australia. Ben Bates and his father Bob were surrounded by growth. ![]()
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