3/28/2013
Modernisation to the power of four
It was more than 30 years ago that concrete engineer Wilhelm Meyer and businessman Heiner Brinkhege laid the foundation for their company with a first production plant near Osnabruck; the company was launched in 1984 under the name of Fertig-Decken-Union GmbH (fdu).
In the years to follow the medium-sized operation developed into one of the largest suppliers of wall and floor elements in Germany. In the second half of 2009 Heiner Brinkhege took over the responsibility of the 16 production plants operating under the roof of fdu. The first contact between the company and Weckenmann was in the early 1990s and since then there have been several joint Projects.
This was not least because after the takeover one of the tasks of the current managing director of Brinkhege-Werke Thomas Beike and his technical project manager Benno Strack was to gradually modernize the plants. Amongst other things, they decided to invest in one Weckenmann automatic concrete distributor each at four of their sites. In early 2012 the concrete plant at Achmer Bramsche took the first screw conveyor concrete distributor in operation. The positive experience that the managers made with the rugged, durable technology of the machine and its precise concrete discharge, as well as the good price-performance ratio were among the key why the decision fell on Weckenmann for the implementation of further modernisation Projects.
At the three other sites the Weckenmann experts were confronted with quite special challenges. The concrete distributor had to be fitted into the existing facilities with some rather difficult space constraints. In one case the installation of the concrete distributor was accompanied by the extension of the existing circulation system to provide for additional offline pallet positions.
At the moment, the machines are being commissioned at all three plants. “With the new technology, we will optimise our process and workflow,” explains CEO Thomas Beike the reasons for the investment: “Concreting times are considerably shorter and now that we can dose the fresh concrete with such precision, we have no more unnecessary material losses, which in turn reduces costs.” According to Beike, in Weckenmann his company also has a plant supplier who not only supplies everything from a single source but who can also provide the appropriate solution to every demand.
