Normet UK and CEMEX

The dry silo solution was developed by Normet UK and CEMEX to push boundaries within the sprayed concrete industry, offering a small footprint alternative to large scale on-site batching plants. Our product ensures wet mix concrete is available on request, providing customers with uninterrupted access to the high-quality product they require. Working closely with our customers we ensure they receive the product they need, and we have lab and trials facilities to further develop and test mixes as required. Over time we have developed our product to ensure challenges such as further pumping distances can be achieved for our customers.

This award is open to any specialist supplier working with companies that design or construct tunnels or tunnelling related infrastructure. You could be providing a specialist product, material, software, app, professional service or advice that supports the tunnelling work.

During the early stages of Crossrail, Normet UK and CEMEX developed a partnership to produce a dry silo sprayed concrete solution, providing the industry a wet mix solution at the touch of a button. The partnership identified the need to supply a quality product, from a small footprint on site, ensuring material was available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Since the Crossrail days, the product and system have been improved to enhance performance, ensuring even the smallest site can benefit from the advantages the dry silo solution offers. Our dry silo sprayed concrete, additive and accelerator solution has since been utilised on major tunnelling projects such as London Power Tunnels 2, Northern Line Extension, Bank Station Capacity Upgrade and multiple Thames Tideway Central sites, including Albert Embankment, Victoria Embankment, Chelsea Embankment, Falconbrook Pumping Station, Heathwall Pumping Station, Cremorne and Blackfriars. The development of the dried silo solution ensures that projects are no longer dependent on large site batching set-ups, nor do they rely on ready-mix solutions based off-site. The key advantage of such dry mix silo-based solutions is that the materials are pre-blended in quality-controlled batching facilities off site. In addition, the small footprint size of the silo set-up makes them ideal for tunnel and shaft construction projects in highly urbanised, congested areas, where transport and delivery logistics can be challenging. CEMEX and Normet have developed the DSM system with Normet’s high performance PCE based superplasticisers and hydration control admixtures, adopted in powder form and blended with aggregates, sand, cement, microsilica and fibres. The mix design can contain no fibres, steel or macro synthetic fibres. In addition to the DSM product, the Normet UK and CEMEX partnership also pride themselves in offering a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach. We can offer our lab facilities to our customers, in order to further develop mix designs or solutions for specific issues. We have a trials testing facility from which we can organise and run trials for projects, providing the materials, products, silos and even spraying equipment and EFNARC certified nozzlemen. Within our research and development teams, we are always looking to continue developing our product to ensure it performs as required by our customers.