Sabo’s activities in the UK and USA
The signs of recovery of the brick industry especially in US states like Texas and the growing demand of the UK housing market have created a favourable and challenging environment for brick plant upgrades. Following the market trends and with the cooperation of Craven Fawcett in UK and Reymond Products Inc in USA, Sabo has completed projects and created solutions suitable for the markets and their brick products.
Successful projects in
the UK
In the UK, Sabo has been very active in new projects and supported customers’ technical decisions, offering solutions based on the experience the plant engineering company has gained all around the world.
For Wienerberger UK, Michelmersch, Ibstock, and Northcot, a range of efficient, innovative and modern solutions has been implemented. New robot unloading grippers for Ibstock’s South Holmwood site and setting grippers for Northcot Brick and Wienerberger’s Denton site are examples of Sabo’s innovation in developing customer-specific solutions. For Ibstock the robot grippers can unload, unstick and position the bricks with the correct surface on the packaging line programming bench no matter how they have been packed on the kiln car.
Northcot and Wienerberger have integrated the new robot grippers into their setting lines to create spaces between the bricks with the help of servomotors, providing the best possible accuracy while at the same time simplifying the function of the programming bench. The packs can have different number of bricks per layer, facilitating the creation of special layers and improving the stability of the packs.
Wienerberger’s Kingsbury site was supplied with a new addition to the existing dehacking line, doubling the production capacity.
The Todhill site has a new pallet handling system with a stacker for its pallet storage unit, and a new programming bench and robot grippers for its dehacker line.
The Broomfleet site has new robots for setting the roofing tiles on the refractory setters. With the help of servomotors, the robots can rotate products, in working cycles of up to six seconds.
At Michelmersch’s Carlton site, Sabo has installed a new dehacking and packaging line that ensures high capacities and optimum handling of the final product. The robots can unload a kiln car to achieve maximum mixing of different layers, to ensure the best possible mix of bricks in the final packs ready for the market.
Positive start on the USA market
Sabo’s start of commercial activity in US through Reymond Products International Inc. has been impressive. After just a few months, the company received the first orders.
Meridian contracted Sabo with a very small but extremely important project for its site in Gleason, Texas. Just a kiln car transporter that proved the quality of Sabo’s equipment but also the professionalism with which it handled the project.
The second project for Meridian came straight after the finish of the first one. Sabo S.A. designed, supplied and commissioned a new high-capacity robot setting machine for 45 000 bricks for Meridian Brick in Henderson, Texas. The new setter includes all the necessary equipment downstream of the existing slug cutter up to loading of the kiln cars and the existing transfer car in the holding room. This setter is one of the biggest active setters in the USA today.
On the back of the success of the previous projects, Sabo was also trusted with three new projects for Meridian at its Elgin site. These included the refurbishment of the kiln with a traditional-type new roof – a very challenging project! The other two projects are a new setter with higher capacity and the modernization of the dehacking line with robots.
Conclusion
The acceptance of Sabo as a supplier for customers on the UK and USA markets over the last two years has been impressive. Sabo’s new partnerships, out-of-the-box thinking, innovative technology, understanding of customers’ specific needs, product quality, and after-sales support are key assets for the plant engineering company.
