Australian Pile Croppers Finds New Ways To Take Care of Its Customers

With an international management team with over 100 years of experience in the foundation piling industry, a world-leading product range and an innovative in-house developed and manufactured product line with a focus on personal service, Australian Pile Croppers (APC) have been one of the Australian construction industry’s best-kept secrets. From its Gold Coast base, the company has gone from strength to strength developing and supplying its own line of patented customer-focused foundation pile cropping solutions to a wide variety of customers.

Fully customisable length and diameter-wise concrete foundation piles for all types of ground conditions have been, and are, used for various civil engineering and construction structures, with common applications ranging from small housing developments to major inner-city renovation, construction and infrastructure projects, including tunnelling. Historically concrete foundation piles were reduced using methods such as hand-held breakers and other inaccurate, expensive and emission-producing methods.

These outdated methods further risked damaging the integrity of the piles and gave rise to associated health problems such as HAV (Hand Arm Vibration syndrome) and the very real risks associated with manual work within unstable/subterranean ground conditions. In direct response to these problems, hydraulic pile croppers were developed, initially in Europe, becoming widely advocated by health and safety professionals and engineers alike, becoming the industry standard from the late 1990s onwards.

Intelligent solution

A pile cropper itself (also known as a pile cutter or pile breaker) is a very precise hydraulic shear with defined angles of deflection and points of contact ensuring a clean cut of the excess pile that does not interfere with the efficacy of the remaining pile. There is a breadth of different types and sizes of croppers, designed specifically for the breadth and range of piles including augured, bearing, contiguous, secant, CFA, trench and helical displacement, with availability in varying sizes ranging normally from 300mm upto 1,800mm in diameter.

All in all, the Australian Pile Cropper team have been central to the introduction and evolution of pile croppers in Australia, with all APC croppers being designed to ensure that construction workers can get the job done as safely and efficiently as possible. APC was created in conjunction with its UK sister company, National Pile Croppers, by a management team to fully refine customer-focused pile cropping solutions. In doing this the team has utilised their 100 years+ of amassed concrete foundation industry experience. The teams’ unprecedented knowledge and passion ensure the supply of the correctly identified equipment, in a fully serviced state, suited for site-specific applications, on time, and at cost-effective price levels.

Since APC’s formation, the company has created a complete range of in-house designed, manufactured and maintained pile cropping equipment, which has revolutionised the pile cropping industry. APC (and NPC) is the only fully vertically integrated pile cropper company taking its products from 3D CAD models with FEA analysis all the way through manufacture and into their operation on site.

Customer focus

One of the core aims of founding Australia Pile Croppers was to provide a unique, customer-focused solution geared to making customers more efficient, safe, productive and profitable.

“Australian Pile Croppers’ range of machines gives a far superior cut and better productivity at the less overall cost to anything else in the marketplace. We listen to the comments of our valued clients, making adjustments and improvements to croppers as necessary, and designing bespoke croppers for larger projects as required. Our unique patented designs, continuous product improvement programme and rigorous R&D, ensure customers get a reliable and robust machine. Our croppers intuitively reduce any need for personnel to be positioned near the breakdown of piles removing the risk of injury, with the safety of site operatives being the top priority in the design of each Australian Pile Cropper model.”

explained Company Managing Director Jim Hamill.

“APC hydraulic croppers are the most advanced, efficient and time-saving system in the world for reducing concrete foundation piles. Using an APC pile cropper normally results in a horizontal finish, at or near RL, undamaged reinforcement and no cracks or spalling below the cut-off level when used as advised by our team of professionals. Our innovative thinking utilises the latest technologies making it possible to break square, hexagonal, octagonal and circular shaped piles at up to 200 piles per day.”

concluded Jim Hamill.

In addition to having an industry-leading product range, Australian Pile Croppers provides a depth of product knowledge and excellent levels of customer service. All customers deal with the same pile cropping expert who will deal with the customer from the beginning to the very end of the hire period. The aim is to provide a highly personal service that reflects the experience and industry know-how of the company, with all equipment manufactured, maintained and operated by in-house industry professionals. All hires (and if so required, equipment sales) are competitively priced and available with 24/7 support.