Many major Australian projects including the Victorian Desalination Plant and, more recently, major wind farm projects require hundreds of kilometres of cable to be protected.

Astron Sales and Marketing Manager Justin Knott said “Our relationship with our clients has always been strong. When we discussed ways we could innovate with the product, it became apparent relatively quickly that a major issue was roll length.

“The ability to produce our rolls in such lengths as 150 m and 200 m required major capital expenditure, as the weight of a roll can be in the vicinity of 300 kg. We understood, however, the benefit this would have for our clients and went ahead and put the equipment in place,” Mr Knott said.

He said that producing the underground cable cover on a roll of 150 m has made the installation process much simpler and far more efficient. It has also avoided the need to overlap the ends numerous times; a common requirement of shorter rolls to avoid a gap between the new roll and the previous roll.

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“When our clients are installing hundreds of kilometres of underground cable, they want to be certain of two things. Firstly, that the underground cable cover they are installing is made by Astron, and secondly that the company is installing it efficiently. The testing conducted by Astron on its cable cover is extensive with both external and internal testing a part of the daily manufacturing process.”

The next stage Astron has implemented is custom width, Mr Knott explained.

“For projects such as the Victorian Desalination Plant, our client faced the issue that the trench needed underground cable cover that was 700 mm wide. Placing our product side by side in the trench was not an effective method to achieve the coverage needed.

“To work with the proponents, we implemented further internal changes and produced a cable cover 700 mm wide x 125 m long. To our knowledge this is the widest and longest underground cable cover produced to date.”

Mr Knott said that for Astron, “It’s all about what is going to work best for the client on their project and we have a manufacturing process in place in Melbourne that accommodates.”