One of Kuwait’s largest precast concrete plants has been recently set up by Acico Construction, using innovative equipment and technology from Italy’s Marcantonini Concrete Technology (MCT).

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, its parent firm Acico Industries Company undertook to set up what is described as possibly the most advanced precast production facility in the country. 

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 ($327 million). 

To set up this major 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, able to supply concrete for the production of sandwich, battery mould and hollow-core precast. 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 required. 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. 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 precast 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,” says a spokesman for the company.

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 adds.

“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 intelligence) suite or any other data-analysis system,” he says.

Key supplier

MCT is a major supplier of customised precast mixing plant and concrete distribution system across the 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,” says Falchetti Gabriele, director Middle East sales.

In terms of business, he says 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. In 2017, it will deliver precast plants to Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, he adds.

A key part of MCT’s customer approach is to provide added value to automation and software control, says Gabriele, adding that the company’s main focus is 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 adds.

Andrea Marcantonini, MCT CEO comments: “Our goal is to offer to customers the best experience in precast and concrete production with the technology we build. In order to achieve that, we keep innovating - everyday.”