With the purchase of the Roadway Reinforcement Services business from Ghassan Skybey, Hilti acquired its well known fibre dowel business, including new innovative products such as the metallised fibre dowel.
Having worked closely with the coal industry for the past 15 years, Skybey developed a solution to reduce coal contamination often found with standard fibreglass dowels.
The new fibreglass dowel is sheathed in a woven metal material which is easily and safely cut by the shearer.
This product feature can allow magnets to remove dowel fragments from the conveyor belt networks, thus reducing the amount of contamination entering the wash plant.
The major decontamination process happens in the wash plant due to increased dowel density, where the dowel fragments sink and get rejected with other contaminants.
The rejection rate in the wash plant is greatly improved.
After extensive trialling at several mines, the metallised fibre dowel is available for general use, offered in 21 millimetre and 24mm diameters with lengths varying from 1 metre to 3m.
As well as continuing to partner the customers of the current fibre bolts, Hilti said it looks forward to further developing unique solutions for other ground control products, with the aim to supply safe and effective systems to the mining industry.