Greylands Waste choose Mek-Tek

Greylands Waste chose Mek-Tek Limited, the UK's only manufacturer of this type of mobile batching plant.

Greylands Waste is a thriving business supplying bulldozers, dumper trucks and other large earthmoving and construction machinery for major projects such as Heathrow Terminal 5 and the new rail link for the Channel Tunnel.

The company also recycles all types of aggregates for re-sale.

Looking for opportunities to expand and diversify, the company decided to use its established facilities and its experience in the aggregate market to provide a ready-mixed foam concrete supply service for highway and utilities repair customers in the London area.

A review of the mobile volumetric concrete mixers needed to start the new venture resulted in a shortlist of two, from which Greylands chose Mek-Tek Limited, the UK's only manufacturer of this type of mobile batching plant.

Its MBP (mobile batching plant) is designed to mix precise quantities of concrete on-site, on-demand with no delays or waste.

A 10m3 Mek-Tek MBP was delivered in February 2005 following a training course for George Fraser (known to everyone simply as Fraser), a Greylands employee with previous experience of mobile volumetric concrete mixers who has been seconded as Concrete Manager to run the new venture.

"The MBP10 started making money straight away and hasn't stopped.

Says Fraser, who explains that initially the bulk of the deliveries were for carriageway repairs and back-filling on maintenance and repair work for utility companies.

So successful has the venture been that Greylands took delivery of two more MBP10 mixers during 2005, and now has a fourth on order for delivery in February! In its first year the business has grown four-fold and now delivers both concrete and foam concrete.

The MBP10 can produce 10m3 of foam concrete and 8m3 of normal concrete when operating with a chassis design of 32 tonne gross vehicle weight.

Keeping up with the demand requires careful planning and almost military precision as three vehicles constantly return to base for reloading and refuelling.

Fraser claims that it's possible to reload the MBP10 with four tonnes of cement and aggregate, and 2000 litres of water in around five minutes thanks to the silos used, which are also supplied by Mek-Tek.

"They make it possible to fill the vehicle with aggregate, cement and water at the same time in a single operation", he says.

Greylands has its own workshops and does most of its own servicing.

With such a busy workload the company can't afford to have the trucks off the road and this is where Mek-Tek really scores, says Fraser.

"If we have a problem I call Mek-Tek sales and service manager Cliff Perks, and most of the time he talks us through it and solves it over the phone".

"On the only occasion that a problem couldn't be resolved on the phone, Mek-Tek came out the same night and the truck was on the road again the next morning".

"The service really is exceptional and the people know their stuff and are also very easy to work with".

He is also impressed by how easy to use the machines are, explaining that the driver for the fourth MBP10 is already on board and has undergone basic training at the Greylands plant.

Before being entrusted with the new vehicle he will also have a day's training at the Mek-Tek factory in Gloucestershire and, after spending his first week on the job being supervised, he'll be earning his keep.

As Fraser explains: "We have a lot of money invested in these machines but we know from experience that if we get it right, they will also make a lot of money for the business.

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