Another Liebherr batching plant for Euromix Concrete
FOLLOWING on from the establishment of their West Thurrock site in late 2005, Euromix Concrete have recently opened another new ready-mixed concrete depot at Greenwich, and once again the company have turned to Liebherr-Great Britain for the supply and installation of the batching plant for this latest addition to their network.
With headquarters at Chelmsford and a further four plants in Ipswich, Southminster (near Maldon, Essex), West Thurrock and now Greenwich, Euromix Concrete are capable of producing over 250,000m3 of concrete a year and are strategically placed to provide coverage of the northern home counties and greater London, both north and south of the Thames.
The Mobilmix 2.25 supplied to the new Greenwich depot is a high-output, mobile, horizontal batching plant of robust modular construction and capable of being transported on only a few vehicles. The plant features easily assembled, fully integrated components for fast and safe installation with minimum ground preparation.
At the heart of the plant is a Liebherr twin-shaft mixer capable of producing up to 100m3/h of ‘set’ concrete. A Liebherr Litronic MPS II microprocessor control, installed in its own integrated module, regulates and monitors the plant’s operation. The entire plant, which includes mixer and weigher platforms, is designed and built to provide ample space for routine cleaning and maintenance procedures.
The configuration chosen by Euromix Concrete for the Greenwich plant is fully enclosed and entirely sheeted. The compact Thames-side site precludes any exterior stockpiling of aggregates, which are delivered by barge. Euromix therefore specified the largest aggregate storage bins available for the Mobilmix plant, giving them 200m³ of total storage with four 50m³ bins.
Euromix Concrete’s business relationship with Liebherr also encompasses the company’s delivery vehicles. Concrete deliveries are carried out by the company’s growing fleet of truckmixers, which consists of a mix of Liebherr HTM 704 and HTM 804 7m3 and 8m3 capacity mixer drums, each one mounted on a Mercedes chassis cab.
The Liebherr HTM mixer assembly features a drum constructed from special high wear-resistant steel with wear protection on the mixer spiral blades for extended working life. A further important factor in extending the working life of both the mixer drum and its Mercedes carrier chassis is the Liebherr-developed high-quality steel frame and U-clamp fixing method.
Drum support pedestals are secured to the substantial U-channel subframe at the ‘underlay’ by stirrup bolts that accommodate flexing. These are fitted close to the frame to avoid stress transference and to distribute loads uniformly to the truck chassis.
This design, coupled with the side-plate fixing arrangement, allows the mixer subframe to be rigidly attached at regular intervals along its entire length, which forms a composite strength with the chassis while still allowing the body to flex as necessary to avoid stress damage and/or misalignment occurring within the mixer superstructure. This results in considerably extended operating life for both the mixer assembly and host vehicle.
