Italy’s Marcantonini Concrete Technology (MCT), a major supplier of customised precast mixing plant in the Middle East region, said it has helped Kuwait-based Acico Construction to set up one of the largest precast concrete plants in the country, using innovative equipment and technology.

Tasked with the challenge of fast-track delivery of precast systems by the main contractor working on a new residential area in Kuwait City, Acico decided to adopt a precast building system that allowed fast erection with consistently high quality elements.

To achieve its goal in a relatively short time, the company's parent firm Acico Industries Company undertook to set up what is described as possibly the most advanced precast production facility in the country, said the Italian firm in its statement.

Acico Industries, one of the largest business groups in Kuwait, serves a wide range of industries with an annual operating income of more than KD100 million ($330 million).

To set up the precast plant, it called upon the expertise of international precast consultant MCT, after detailed studies of its equipment, efficiency, reliability, after-sales service support and experience throughout the Middle East.

MCT equipped the batching plant with a double mixer (2 cu m concrete production capacity each) with an associated automatic concrete distribution system that can supply concrete for the production of sandwich, battery mould and hollow-core precast.

According to Italian group, the double mixer plant guarantees a peak concrete production of 100 cu m per hour. An automatic colour pigment dosing system enables the production of cast coloured concrete for the top layer, if re- quired.

Rapid, reliable and fast delivery is carried out using the latest version of MCT flying buckets, which can achieve speeds of 240 m per minute, it stated.

The plant produces all the necessary structural components for civil buildings, such as hollow-core slabs, main and boundary walls, sandwich panels and stairs.

Additionally, the plant for Acico Construction provided an opportunity to test MCT’s newly released compumat, an in-house developed software that takes pre-cast production to a new level.

“MCT’s new system for concrete production and casting process management continues to be enhanced in line with the requirements of quality control and assurance, which is being strictly controlled by authorities around the world,” said its chief executive Andrea Marcantonini.

"Our goal is to offer customers the best experience in precast and concrete production with the technology we build. In order to achieve that, we keep innovating – everyday," he noted.

The new software control system, together with the technologies developed by MCT, enables its customers to achieve the most efficient precast production, minimising errors and waste and reducing costs, he added.

“Many new features have been incorporated in our software to considerably reduce manual work while guaranteeing the best results. We have added proactive support to prevent any possible fault and to monitor the status of the  plant from our headquarters virtually  in  real-time. A plethora of data can be easily extracted from the software to feed any ERP, BI (enterprise resource planning/business in- telligence) suite or any other data-analysis system,” he stated.

MCT is a major supplier of customised precast mixing plant and concrete distribution system across the Middle East, stated Falchetti Gabriele, the sales director for Middle East.
 
"I believe that our fully customised plants are leading the precast industry in terms of achieving high production output and minimising the workforce," he added.

In terms of business, Gabriele said: "Although the Middle East market has contracted mainly due to the drop in oil prices, thanks to MCT’s growing sales network, the company has been able to maintain a steady revenue for the area."

According to him, the Italian firm will deliver precast plants to Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia this year.

"A key part of MCT’s customer approach is to provide added value to automation and software control," he said.

The company’s main focus, he stated, was on continuous product development.

“Optimising concrete production process and analysing relevant data becomes intuitive with our new Compumat and remote control makes updates, checks or even managing the whole production process easy,” he added.-TradeArabia News Service