Reaching record depths

A successful on-going partnership between an innovative English extrusion company and a Dutch construction firm has set new standards in installing plastic piling – managing to drive down to an incredible depth of 11.5 metres!

CeTeau, with offices in Malaysia and Thailand, began using HL Plastics’ Liniar range of uPVC sheet piling after they were contracted with the mammoth task of finding a flood prevention solution by several Bangkok businesses that were affected by the severe floods of October 2011.

Seven major industrial estates were inundated by as much as 10 feet of water during the catastrophe which was described as “the worst flooding yet in terms of the amount of water and people affected” – the World Bank estimated it as the fourth costliest disaster in history at the time.

One of CeTeau’s initial challenges was to find a way to drive the piling up to 5m deep into the ground – something they achieved with an innovative solution from their engineers. By using a sheet of steel pile clamped to a plastic sheet, then releasing the clamp and pulling the steel out, they discovered they could install the plastic piling to depths of 5m.

And the method has proved to be such a huge success that they have now managed to install the piling at more than double that original target – an incredible 11.5m!

It was necessary for CeTeau to get down to that depth during their latest project – the construction of a 270-metre-long wall in Samut Prakan. This was to form a seepage barrier designed to protect the foundations of a monument structure near the Chao Phraya River.

The unprecedented feat of installing piling that far down has been accredited not only to the ingenuity of the engineers at CeTeau, but also to the quality of the product used.

CeTeau Managing Director, Tijl Pieter de Zwart, commented,

Because of the high water content in the soil in the area, it was necessary to get the piling deeper than we had previously attempted. I know that some thicker sheet pile has been installed in the US to a similar depth, but nothing as thin as the Liniar piling has been achieved before.

“We are confident that this is a world first! But we never doubted that we could successfully drive that far as it’s an outstanding, strong product and has never let us down.”

By the end of 2014, more than 125,000m of plastic sheet pile had been transported across to Thailand, and the CeTeau team continue to win work across South East Asia.

For more information on Liniar plastic piling go to: www.liniar.co.uk/plastic-piling