| COMPANY NEWS |
Local concrete equipment manufacturer PMSA has suggested concrete manufacturers follow a phased approach to streamline manufacturing and position themselves to fully capitalise on an inevitable leap in demand for precast units post-lockdown. Hav ing suf fered var y ing deg rees of f inancial distress during the hard lockdown, concrete manufacturers should look towards optimising their current operations and modernising plants in order to cut input costs and boost production. Incremental upgrades are not prohibitively expensive, but can have the ef fect of radically improving output volumes. PMSA marketing and sales manager Quintin Booysen adds that plant upgrades offered by the organisation on most major brands of brick, block and paver-making machinery has the additional benef it of improving productivity of the plant, reducing cement consumption and allowing faster strength gains of concrete products. Opportunity awaits “While cash flow is tight and money hard to come by, it’s increasingly obvious that companies need to be re-geared for a new way of doing business. Right now, they need to get back to full production, but do it carefully, so that they preserve cash flow while still upgrading and boosting plants. “These upgrades start with simple measures like new production boards, which give better-quality end products,
GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS
WITH A BANG cement-savings and fewer breakages, and can even improve curing times. Additional measures could include the installation of moisture measuring systems and control in aggregates and concrete mixers. By not considering and adjusting for moisture in aggregates, you could be partially dosing water in place of aggregate. Wet aggregate contains water trapped around the aggregate particles and by measuring the aggregate moisture content and adjusting for the moisture, you get a
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PRECAST | ISSUE TWO | 2021
“Companies need to get back to full production, but do it carefully, so that they preserve cashflow while still upgrading and boosting plants.”
