An out-of-the-ordinary conversion – from concrete precasting facility to prefab wall system plant
Belgium’s first Rimatem masonry machine
“I saw numerous challenges coming at us”, Filip Despierre reports, “but I was sure that we would master them all with some help from Rimatem – an internationally active contractor with long years of experience in the field of prefabricated masonry. Ultimately, I was convinced by the numerous detail solutions. Rimatem thought of everything from the planning of an efficient production facility to the transport and installation of the finished walls.” And so, a team from Rimatem got together with the Belgian entrepreneur and planned a new hall for the machines. The new masonry unit was intended to cover the carcass contractor’s in-house prefab masonry requirements. Tobias Riffel, general manager, was able to convince Despierre to make the hall large enough for a second automatic masonry production unit – just in case and at little extra expense. So, while one half of the new hall was used for producing precast concrete elements, the other half was utilized for making masonry. The first unit was commissioned in May of 2007.
From then on, Filip Despierre was able to provide all the prefab masonry the company needed for all its various jobsites, and he was very enthusiastic about all the time saved and the consistently high quality of production. Even public tendering was no longer a problem. Thanks to the new equipment, dws-prefab had lowered its overhead and put itself in a position to carry out more orders with the same number of personnel spending less time at each contract site. And thanks to the high quality of the masonry produced, Filip Despierre started receiving more and more inquiries from other construction contractors wanting to purchase his prefabricated walls. After a while, he began to supply to other contractors (non-competitors, of course), but that soon nearly exceeded his plant‘s capacity. Even a second shift was unable to satisfy all the demand, so after less than two years, the company had a second masonry unit installed. (Remember: ample space had been provided in advance.)
Three in a year
Rimatem‘s masonry units gave Filip Despierre a second leg to stand on and made his company more successful than ever.
– round-about-you/
El Ahwany –