News

On Wednesday the 7th December 2022, Mixamate rallied outside Parliament to campaign for legislation to protect the use of Volumetric Concrete Mixers (VCMs) within the concrete and engineering industry.

Mixamate’s owner and Chairman of the BSA, (Batched On Site Association) Chris Smith attended the demonstration with support from former MP Nigel Griffiths, also present were Mark Reeve, Sales manager at Baylynx, and Philip Wright, MD of Wright Mix concrete as well as other prominent members of the industry.

VCMs are low carbon and low cost, they supply concrete to the market with zero waste, they only mix the concrete when on site so there is no wasted material ,unlike a typical Drum Mixer which takes a pre-mixed load to site, this has a two-hour shelf life so will dump what’s not used. VCMs fitted with a concrete pump also eliminate the necessity to bring another separate pumping truck to site, saving unnecessary truck movements in busy cities.

Currently VCMs can carry 38.4 tonnes on 4 axles and 44 on 5 axles. Both these weights have been passed by the governments own experts to be bridge friendly.  Mixamate lobbied against Parliament’s proposed weight reduction on VCMs down to 32 tonnes, which would increase the truck movements necessary for each job, creating a higher carbon footprint per lorry and bumping up production costs.

The campaign to protect VCMs is vital, cost effective and green for the concrete and engineering industry was backed by 120 MPs in support. Former MP, Nigel Griffiths stated,

“The reaction we’ve had, both from MP’s and the public, has been really encouraging, and I think this is definitely a campaign we can win.”