Bridon installs world’s biggest rope machine at Neptune Quay facility

Offshore staff

DONCASTER, UK– Bridon has started to install the world’s biggest machine for manufacturing steel wire ropes at the Neptune Quay facility in Newcastle, UK.

Produced by the German engineering company SKET, the closer machine is used to form dozens of strands of wire into a single finished rope. The £10-million ($16-million) closer manufactures ropes in package weights of up to 650 metric tons (717 tons).

The facility also boasts a new SKET-manufactured stranding machine, which winds dozens of wires together into individual strands that can be spun together by the closer machine.

To ease the load out of 650-metric ton rope reels onto vessels moored at the factory’s deepwater quayside, Bridon has commissioned Newcastle-based engineering firm Pipe Coil Technology to deliver a take-up stand; a machine which is used to move new ropes on the final reels from the closer to the quay side without any assistance.

Bridon Group Chief Executive Jon Templeman said: “In constructing a state-of-the-art factory that will lead the world in the production of large, complex ropes, we knew we could settle for nothing less than the biggest and best rope making machinery ever produced. The closer, strander, and take-up stand atBridon Neptune Quay are not only the largest rope making machines in existence; they also have the capacity to make the most complex and highly engineered ropes ever conceived.”

8/01/2012