WCA March 2009

news

WAI 2009 president named The Wire Association International (WAI) Inc has announced the appointment of Antonio Ayala Reyna as president of the association for a one-year term, commencing on 1 st January 2009. Ayala will serve as the 55 th president of the 79 year-old association, headquartered in Guilford, Connecticut with a subsidiary office in Pune, India. 

Continuing the efforts of his predecessor, 2008 WAI president Ronald W Reed, Ayala will lead the association’s growth initiatives, which include further expansion into the Asian markets and enhancements to its publication, Wire Journal International, and to Interwire, the association’s flagship trade show and said to be the largest of its kind in the Americas. 

 “WAI is steadily becoming more international in scope and the leadership that Antonio Ayala will provide during his tenure will be critical in our pursuit of providing services to the worldwide industry,” said WAI executive director, Steven Fetteroll. Wire Association International – USA Fax : +1 203 453 8384 Website : www.wirenet.org

MEP – supporting construction

Charcon, a specialist in off-site solutions for the UK’s civil engineering industry, has significantly increased production capabilities at its Croft factory thanks to a new automatic stirrup bender from MEP, supplied by Whitelegg Machines of Crawley UK. Charcon, an Aggregate Industries UK Ltd business and producer of pre-cast concrete service protec- tion systems, has acquired the automatic stirrup bender to help speed production and to replace the factory’s existing manual bending system.

The operator station for the stirrup bender m m

Paul Saunders, operations manager at Charcon, was responsible for the choice of automatic stirrup bender to replace the factory’s slow manual bending system. He said: “It was the reputation of MEP as leaders in the market, and a visit to see a machine working at a third party site, that convinced me to select the MEP Focus 12 product to assist our operations.” The MEP Focus 12 has the capacity to handle diameters from 6mm to 12mm of cold or hot rolled rebar and can process two wires up to 12mm. Its ease of set-up and programming by unskilled operatives was an important factor for Charcon. Chris Garton, assistant factory manager for Charcon, explained: “Our expectations of the MEP link bender have been greatly exceeded; it is easily capable of doing what we bought it for. Though speed is not of the essence in our business, accuracy most certainly is and this product meets our specifications.” Currently, Charcon has 60 standard shapes held in the bender’s computer graphic memory enabling swift product shape changes, with one-off specials easily created. Output is completed during a single shift per day. Charcon’s output is up to 450 tonnes of finished product a week and most items will contain reinforcement.

Whitelegg Machines – UK Email : mep@whitelegg.com Website : www.whitelegg.com

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2009