Paving Liverpool’s Canada Docks with Aggregate Industries

26 Apr 2018

Aggregate Industries has provided its innovative and highly-durable Highpave® concrete mix for the resurfacing of a scrap metal yard at Liverpool’s Canada Docks.

Leading metal recycling firm S Norton collects, processes and exports approximately 1 million tonnes of metal every year, from its dock facilities in Southampton, London and Liverpool, located on the edge of the River Mersey.

As scrap metal is continuously loaded on and off the site’s external slabbed yard area through the day, wear and tear from the abrasion meant it urgently needed replacing.

This resulted in the family-run business seeking a hard wearing reinforced concrete solution providing superior strength and durability; ideal for heavy impact areas.

The choice to opt for Aggregate Industries’ Highpave® was due to the company’s unparalleled ease in pavement construction.

Highpave® is a range of fibre reinforced pavement grade concrete, designed to withstand mechanical force whilst lowering the errors attached to the use of conventional reinforcing methods.

Roughly 875 cubic metres of Highpave®, made using the firm’s ultra-hard-wearing Glensanda granite aggregate, was supplied to the project, which took place during November 2017.

Reinforced concrete usually features two layers of steel mesh in the slab’s construction, but the addition of steel fibres in the Highpave® mix meant the top layer of mesh can be removed, increasing the wearing depth of the concrete by 100mm more – meaning likely reduced labour costs for the customer compared to traditional mesh reinforcement.

Furthermore, to overall CO2 impact of the concrete mix was lowered by being formulated using recyclable materials.

Aggregate certainly impressed throughout; the work completed successfully and to a high standard, in line with the customer’s unique specifications, and on top of this, S Norton is already in talks about future projects because of the quality of the bespoke concrete mix.

Daniel King, general manager at Aggregate Industries, commented: “With its unrivalled hard wearing properties, we are delighted that our Glensanda granite aggregate, used to create a bespoke Highpave® blend, proved the perfect fit for S Norton’s specialist needs.

“We have no doubt that our tailored supply of concrete with its superior toughness, high volume stability and reduced shrinkage, will create a slabbed yard that lasts for years to come.”

Matt Norton, Technical Director at S Norton, added: “Our Canada Docks’ site is at the heart of our business, making it essential that the scrap metal yard has flooring that can withstand the heavy duty process of mechanically sorting through hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ferrous metal each year.”

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