Sunday, October 31, 2010

UK construction largest contributor to GDP growth in Q3.

According to a report by UK's Office of National Statistics, GDP grew by 0.8 per cent in Q3 2010. The UK's construction industry contributed almost one third to this growth. Compared to Q3 2009, the construction industry has grown by 11 per cent.




don't forget to visit our website http://www.emplica.com

Cement producers in former soviet states looking towards a brighter sky

After a reduction of nearly 20 per cent in cement consumption in 2009, the per capita demand of cement has come back in 2010 and the future looks even better. With a market potential of 260 million inhabitants, the CIS countries are larger than most western european people imagine. Cement producers are boosting their output now to be ready to react to future rising market demands.
Many of the CIS countries (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Georgia and Armenia) are rich in minerals, some have oil reserves and gas. To be able to turn those assets into money, governments are spending massively on infrastructure.
Personally, i think the CIS countries have been underestimated by western companies for a long time.


All about formwork repair system on our website: http://www.emplica.com

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Sochi 2014 winter games will break record in sponsorship funds

In a  moscow times article of october 2010, the games chief Dmitry Chernyshenko stated that funding for the 2014 winter games in Sochi will probably exceed all historic winter games in revenue by commercial sponsors. He claims that already now sponsorship revenues have topped 1 billion USD. The games in Beijing had a sponsorship revenue of 1.2 billion USD. In addition that, several more billions are spent on infrastructure.




read the full article here: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/sochi-games-may-not-need-state-cash/419677.html

and dont forget to check emplica's website for updates on formwork repair.

Housing market in Poland on track

According to PMR (http://www.constructionpoland.com), the delivery of residencial housing has risen in september 2010 by 4.1 per cent compared to september 2009. Compared to August 2010, the completion of projects has expanded by 11 per cent. However, compared to last year's september, new residential projects are 1.7 per cent down. Still, investors have obtained more construction permits than last september. Altogether, the outlook for the polish market seems to be rather promising.

Distributors needed / economy recovering strongly

As the world economy recovers better than expected in most countries, emplica is helping to repair formwork more than planned. The construction industry is developing better in many areas and large projects are being started or finished after a break. To satisfy our valued customers even better, we are looking for distributors in following areas and countries:


- Singapore/Malaysia
- Hong Kong
- Australia
- Southern Africa
- Brazil
- Chile
- Argentina
- Russia
- Japan
- Canada
- USA
- Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador
- UK and Ireland
- France
- Italy
If you are interested, have a background and references, please send us your details through our webform . We will get back to you shortly.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bem-Vindo!

Bem-Vindo!
As of today, we are proud to announce that our portuguese-speaking clients can read our website in their mother tongue as well.
Welcome Portugal, Brazil, Mocambique, Angola, Guinea, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Cap Verde and Sao Tome

check out our portuguese website here:

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Video of emplica long-term test

Maybe it is more fun to look at pictures when there's some nice music in the background...

Here is the slideshow of the test. As stated in a previous post. the results are better than expected. We can't find any significant difference between the first and the 25th pour. What changed a lot though was the damage that can be seen on the lower right corner. it has become deeper as with every pour some wood fibres stick to the concrete and get torn out of the form.
The emplica plywood repair system apparently does its job well.




more info on our website: www.emplica.com

Monday, October 18, 2010

emplica starterkit video

The emplica starterkit is a sturdy steel container made for heavy duty but lightweight use on site or within your premises to repair your formwork.

Different compartments give easy access to all tools and parts to start repairing your formwork today!



more info on www.emplica.com

Long-Term Test with emplica Plicafix on concrete form

After 12 Weeks, we have some preliminary results of our long term test with a standard plicafix 60 inserted into a wisaform birch plywood form.

We are testing the development of the concrete surface with each pour. Up to now, we have poured 25 times.

Test setup:

- plicafix60 plywood repair spot on Wisaform birch
- finegrain concrete (0-8mm), very little form release oil.
- concrete stays in form for 72 hrs.

Results:

- No significant change in concrete surface
- changes of surface mainly occur according to liquidity of concrete and amount of oil applied


here are the images of every 5th piece of concrete made during the test:








we will of course continue this test and keep you updated on results.

for more information about our products please visit our website www.emplica.com





Friday, October 15, 2010

Sissi does it!

Sissi, a giant tunnel drill, did it today at 14:17 cet underneath miles of rock. The breakthrough of the worlds longest tunnel was seen by workers and politicians. The project itself started 15 years ago and will go on until 2017, when the first trains are expected to pass through.
The Gotthard Alptransit is a 57 km long tunnel through the center of the swiss alps. Due to government regulations that demand cutting heavy road traffic from 1,2 million trucks to 0,65 million trucks per year this tunnel was necessary to carry the commercial transport through switzerland on the north-south route.
more information about the project can be found here: http://www.alptransit.ch/en/

"Gotthard-Live-Ticker: «100 Helme werden gesprengt»"

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Longest Tunnel in the world about to see "break-through" tomorrow!

The Suez Canal, the Panama canal, and now the new tunnel through the Gotthard massif in the swiss alps are the longest man made passages.

With a lenght of 57 kilometers (35 miles), the Alptransit Train Tunnel is to be opened for traffic in 2017. The workers will remove the last 2 meters of rock friday 15th of october. A live stream will show the last digging here: SFTV

Here's the Trailer to the show:


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Seems like the world is seeing a lot of digging lately, as the 33 miners were rescued yesterday in Chile. What an impressive work of engineering.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

stunning tranformation of overground WW2 Bunker in north-western Germany

I stumbled upon this piece of architecture as an entry for the "Heinze Architekten Award". These overground bunkers had been built in the last years of the WW2 all over Germany. Since they are so solid, it is pretty hard work to tear them down. Tight communal budgets prevented these bunkers from being demolished and instead many of them became landmarks and have been used for art. One of theses bunkers now serves as a pedestal for a 200sqm appartment.




















images courtesy of http://www.architekturobjekte.de




One of the most famous overground bunkers is the one on Heiliggeistfeld in Hamburg (Hamburg had the most bunkers during the war) image courtesy of wikipedia

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

8.5% increase in construction output in Poland in August

According to PMR, a central and eastern europe consultancy, the polish construction market increased by 8,5 per cent compared to August 2009, and by 6,7 per cent compared to July 2010.
This stands in contrast to shrinking construction business in romania and bulgaria, where the aftermaths of the economic crisis account for 1,7 per cent decline.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Expansion of Panama Canal, one of the worlds current Megaprojects

The Panama Canal, opened in 1914 for Vessels, is a 80 kilometer long connection between the atlantic and pacific ocean.
Construction started in 1904 with the goal to shorten east-west route for commercial shipping. In the early days, about 1.000 vessels went through the canal per year, recently this number has increased to 14.000 ships per annum.
Due to the extreme increase and the much larger cargo vessels used today, the panama canal has become too small and is currently being expanded. The expansion of the panama canal is one of southern americas largest construction project with an estimated budget of US$ 5.3 bn. (compare this to the new trainstation in stuttgart with at least7 bn euro).
construction in 1904...
and construction in 2010

formwork for the new gates is hopefully repaired by the emplica formwork repair system...
check out our how-to-repair-formwork videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/emplicaswitzerland


Friday, October 1, 2010

Yelena Baturina: position weakens in moscow, new opportunities for construction market

After her husband Yury Luzhkov lost his job as mayor of moscow, a sigh of relieve seems to go through hundreds of moscow builders. Maybe the market will become less corrupt. Yelena Baturins company ZAO Inteco has always been focus of rumors of being favored in bids by moscows town hall when it came to building city infrastructure and residential and office buildings.

As a reaction to Luzhkov's dismissal by Medvedev, Russias VEB-Bank has dropped first credits to Baturins empire according to "Spiegel", a german news magazine. Furthermore, Moscows own Bank has received a less favorible rating by Fitch New York now "rating watch negative". Why? Moscow Bank is Baturins "housebank" and covers for much of what she does. Fitch fears that the relationship between the Bank and Moscow will turn rougher now and put the Bank into a bad position...

Since the rest of russia is very much depending on moscow, one could hope now for less corruption in all of russia as well.

More in-depth articles about the incident can be found here, here and here (the last link to moscow time is a little older, but the article says a lot. scroll down a bit or search for baturina)