Fabricating a better tomorrow Designing, building and installing plastic piping solutions for New Zealand’s infrastructure is about more than simply providing products for Solo Plastics. It is about fabricating a better tomorrow with its kaitiakitanga of the environment as a core value underpinning everything the company does. This sees it take a circular economy approach to the products and processes it uses, looking at purchasing and supply chain as well as supporting the local community where possible. This made Solo Plastic an obvious choice to work on the Waiāri Water Supply Scheme pipeline and Te Maunga outfall projects. Solo supplied bends and extended leg stub langes plus some special slim langes for the project. Company business development manager civil projects Chris van der Merwe manages the polyethylene (PE) site welding team and says that the project meant the team had to constantly adapt to customer needs and supply welders at short notice if required. “For example although the Solo fabrication teamwas not involved with the Waiāri Water Supply Scheme pipeline project some of Solo's fabrication team did help out Heb when the project got behind because of some delays with the delivery of some pipes and ittings to help ensure the project stayed on track. It also assisted with welding Ø800 pipe and was on site for about one month doing containerised welding,” he says. Chris says both projects demonstrated the ability of the Solo team to be responsive to client needs and deliver on time and on budget. He says that large diameter PE pipes are being increasingly used for sewer and surface water management. Their growing popularity is due to a number of factors: “PE is a 100% re-usable material and one of the easiest plastics to be recycled into new products, meeting today’s circular economy directives and demands to consider our environmental impact. The production of PE pipe produces 95% less greenhouse gas emissions when transported from the production facility to site and 21% less during production process compared with concrete. It’s a stable material and has a working lifespan of 100 years. It is earthquake resilient, faster to install compared with concrete and easy to install on site.” To meet its environmental strategies Solo not only recycles 100% of all HDPE waste produced internally it also takes clean HDPE waste from any source, chipping it and extruding it into pellets for re-use into new products including plastic pipes from recycled milk bottles and other HDPE plastics. Solo has recently invested in new high-tech equipment from Germany that can produce pipes from this material on a massive scale using a method called spiral wound extrusion to produce product that is incredibly strong without being heavy, says Chris. Based in Auckland Solo Plastics began its journey in the mid 1980’s. Back then Solo focused only on made to order products and later also began importing and selling ittings and by 1999 it had added a warehouse facility. Over the next two decades the company continued to grow, adding more buildings and more sta until by 2019 Solo owned ive buildings in Avondale and employed 44 sta . Solo supplies and installs a range of solutions including polyethylene, HDPE and a host of PVC plastic piping options. Chris says the company is well placed to remain at the forefront of the industry and will continue to innovate and meet both economic and environmental demands to take Solo into the next exciting phase of its journey. Contact Solo Plastics for more details on this environmentally friendly, recycled product: p +64 9828 9594 | e solo.sales@solo.co.nz | w solo.co.nz AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH YOUR LOCAL MERCHANT. ENGINEERED TO YOUR EXACT SPECIFICATIONS FROM RECYCLED PLASTIC AND ITS MADE RIGHT HERE IN NZ. THE PERFECT SUSTAINABLE, LIGHTWEIGHT AND SUPER STRONG SOLUTION FOR LARGE BORE CULVERT PIPES.
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