For the last two years the markets of the US and UK markets have been particularly interesting for developing and delivering new projects for SABO.
The signs of recovery of the brick industry especially in states like Texas and the growing demand of the UK housing market created a favourable and challenging environment for brick factory upgrades.
Following the market trends and with the cooperation of Craven Fawcett in UK and Reymond Products Inc in USA, SABO has managed to complete projects and create solutions suitable for the markets and their brick products.
UK market
In UK, SABO has been near every new project that have been surfaced and has taken part in the technical decision of the customers, offering solutions based on the experience gained all around the world.
Wienerberger UK, Michelmersch, Ibstock, Northcot are among the new satisfied clients, with a range of efficient, innovative and modern solutions.
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, finding solutions to accommodate client’s special needs. For Ibstock the robot grippers can unload, de-stick and position the bricks with the correct surface on the packaging line programming bench no matter how they were packed on the kiln car.
Northcot and Wienerberger have integrated to their setting lines the new robot grippers which create spacing between the bricks with the use of servomotors and provide the best possible accuracy simplifying at the same time the function of the programming bench. Packets can have a different number of bricks per layer, making easier the creation of special layers improving the stability of the packets.
At Wienerberger’s Kingsbury site was supplied a new addition to the existing dehacker line, doubling its production capacity. The Todhill site has a new pallet handling system with a stacker for its garage, and a new programming bench and robot grippers for its dehacker line. The Broomfleet site has new setting robots for the tiles on the refractory cassettes using again servomotors for the rotation of some products and working cycles that go down to 6 seconds.
At Michelmersch’s Carlton site, SABO has installed a new dehacker and packaging line that ensures high capacity numbers and the best handling of the final product. The robots can unset a kiln car in a way that maximum mixing of different layers can be achieved having the best possible mixture of bricks in the final packet provided to the market.
USA market
SABO’s start of the commercial activity in the U.S. through Reymond Products International Inc. was impressive. Just a few months after the first approach orders started to arrive.
The first opportunity was given to SABO by Meridian with a very small but extremely important project for their site at Gleason, Texas. Just a kiln car transporter that proved the quality of SABO’s equipment but also the professionalism with which it was handled such a small project.
The second project for Meridian came right after the finish of the first one. SABO had to provide a new high capacity robotic setting machine for Meridian Brick in Henderson Texas, in United States. A new robotic setter was designed and commissioned for 45.000 bricks per hour. The new setter includes all the necessary equipment after the existing slug-cutter till the loading of the kiln cars and the existing transfer car of the holding room.
This setter is one of the biggest active setters in the United States of America today.
Due to the success of the previous projects, SABO was also trusted with three new projects for Meridian at their site at Elgin. The refurbishment of the kiln with a traditional type new roof is something not many suppliers would undertake. A new setter with a higher capacity and the modernization of the dehacker line with robots are two projects that complete this set of the three new projects.
The acceptance of SABO as a supplier for customers of the UK and USA markets during the last two years was impressive. SABO’s new partnerships, the out of the box thinking, providing innovative technology, understanding clients’ specific needs, product quality, after-sales support, have given SABO the edge to be considered one of the best heavy clay machinery suppliers worldwide.
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