One of North America’s most fragmented and regionalized industries—precast concrete—has a new national player with the formation of the AltusGroup (www.altusprecast.com), a first-ever national partnership of precast companies.
Conceived to manufacture and market the new CarbonCast technology for precast concrete as well as future precast innovations, AltusGroup provides a national network of manufacturing plants, sales personnel, engineers and technical support that ensure the consistent production and application of advanced precast products.
The founding members of AltusGroup are some of the most well known and highly respected names in the precast concrete industry: Oldcastle Precast Inc., Building Systems Division (Edgewood, Md.); HIGH Concrete Structures Inc. (Lancaster, Pa.); precasters JW Peters and Iowa Prestress of Cretex Cos. (Elk River, Minn.); Metromont Prestress Co. (Greenville, S.C.); and Rocky Mountain Prestress (Denver, Co.). Combined, the companies have more than 25 manufacturing and sales locations in the U.S.; more than 200 specification-oriented sales, marketing and engineering professionals; and revenue exceeding $1 billion in their most recent fiscal years.
"This is undoubtedly one of the most significant developments in the building products industry in the last 50 years," said William Dausch, chairman of AltusGroup. "Through a single point of contact, our customers can achieve their design, construction and operating objectives through innovative, high-quality products backed by outstanding technical expertise that can save them time and money."
CarbonCast (www.carboncast.com) represents the first of many new technologies for which AltusGroup was created to develop and market. With pooled research resources, knowledgeable manufacturing engineers, a national network of plants and sales support staff and university collaborators, AltusGroup is poised to bring precast innovation to the construction market faster and more effectively than any single precaster or industry association.
In addition, precast technologies developed collectively—and vetted by professionals in the precast industry—will likely gain more rapid, widespread acceptance among architects, engineers and developers.
"The broad range of CarbonCast products and a national marketing program developed by AltusGroup immediately creates more new product sales opportunities for each of our companies than we could have achieved by ourselves for a decade," said Tom Holmes, chairman of the AltusGroup Marketing Committee. "The anticipated demand for the unique and valuable benefits of CarbonCast products could outstrip the production and transportation capacity of any single company. Our national partnership will ensure that CarbonCast products will be available when and where customers want them—anywhere in the United States—and even parts of Canada."
The CarbonCast system replaces the secondary steel reinforcing elements in precast concrete with a high-strength composite carbon grid. CarbonCast’s combination of corrosion resistance, light weight and strength make it ideal for applications such as architectural wall panels, hardwall panels, double tees for parking decks and bridge decks and supports. It can reduce the weight of architectural structures like wall panels up to 66% while also offering improved insulating properties and finer finishes. The reduced weight contributes to lower shipping and erection costs as well as possible substructure savings.
CarbonCast technology uses C-GRID composite carbon fiber technology from TechFab, LLC, Anderson, S.C. (www.techfabllc.com), also an AltusGroup founder. AltusGroup members have an exclusive license to use patented CarbonCast technology and C-GRID in precast products.
More information about AltusGroup and CarbonCast is available at 866/GO-ALTUS.
