Prestressed Concrete Beam Casting

This concrete products company operate from their own aggregate quarry in Oxfordshire, manufacturing their prestressed flooring beams, hollow core slabs and precast stair blocks.

They have demonstrated strong growth over the years, investing in additional casting beds, silos and a new batching system to keep up with demand and further strengthen their market positioning.

Being a longstanding customer of Peveril, we were pleased to support the expansion of their manufacturing plant and storage capacity over several growth phases.

When they extended their unit to accommodate an additional T-beam production bed, and a new Peveril aggregate feed system, it was decided to relocate a previously supplied 80-ton vertical cement silo.

In their early days they used a Peveril low-level (horizontal) silo, with volumetric truck mixers transporting the aggregate from the quarry workings to the beam casting tables. As product demand increased, it became clear that barrel truck mixers would offer increased production, if they could be filled efficiently.

Peveril was commissioned to design, build and install a new aggregate feed system that would achieve this efficiency gain.

Taking a site-wide approach, we also relocated the 80-ton silo to enable quicker cement dispensing into the truck mixers. The feed system consisted of a 40-ton aggregate hopper for the mixed ballast, with a drag out conveyor filling the mixer trucks via an inclined conveyor. The original horizontal silo was retained, and fitted with load-cells, for feeding the 4-ton weighing hopper that connected to the truck dispensing hopper.

In a safety-by-design approach, the batch controller was automatically locked until a truck was beneath the hopper. This arrangement minimises operator error and the risk of misuse outside of working hours.

Finally, load-cells were added to the horizontal silo to speed up the process and provide more production capacity.

Our most recent task at this site was to switch out the original low-level silo (incidentally the first of this type built) for a larger version.

This ongoing relationship between us has enabled our client to increase their production in line with their sales growth, whilst improving efficiency and competitiveness at each growth stage.