Anyone for drive-through concrete?

If it catches on, builders will be able to just drive by their builders’ merchant, wave their bank card, and have their required mix and quantity of concrete, mortar or screed tipped down a chute onto the back of their truck.

Fibo Intercon is pushing its Fibo Collect technology to the UK builders merchant market. The new machines integrate an automated concrete batching plant with a touch-screen payment terminal so customers can collect batched material at the push of a button.

The team at Fibo hope that their system will help builders, landscapers & DIYers tackle the ‘small-loads’ challenge. Typically, anyone who needs  small to medium loads of concrete has a choice of three methods:

• mix it yourself on site – time-consuming
• collect from the local ready-mix plant – a lot of hanging around
• delivery to site by volumetric trucks. This is the most popular route but, says Fibo, customers can be subject to minimum order charges, issues with waste disposal and problems with waiting times. This is also thought to be the least environmentally friendly solution for smaller loads.

Fibo Collect is being presented as a fourth way.

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Fibo Intercon chief executive Henrik Jeppessen said: “When we looked at the UK market we saw a huge opportunity to tackle both the customer challenge and the environmental challenge posed by concrete delivery. Our solution ultimately gives the end customer more choice: They choose exactly what types of recipes, how much they want to collect, when they want to collect it and even how they want to pay.”

His route to market is via builders' merchants. “We feel they have a huge opportunity to drive new revenue streams from their existing customer base whilst also building a new unique selling point over the local competition that will help draw in new customers,” he said.

Fibo Collect machines offer up to 60 recipes using up to four different additives. Silo levels are measured using weight cells and refill alarms are triggered by email and SMS. An automated internal washing system cleans the pan mixer immediately after a batch is delivered, ready for the next batch and a new recipe.

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