Adelaide's Sustainable Infrastructure Systems signs contract to make light/strong bridges for Dutch company
Sustainable Infrastructure Systems structures director Nick Wotton (at left, main image) on a prefabricated lightweight bridge installed by the company at Castle Hill Country Club in New South Wales. Inset: Wotton with Luigi Rossi at the Netherlands embassy in Canberra after Sustainable Infrastructure Systems signed its contract with Dutch company InfraCore.
Sustainable Infrastructure Systems, based in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, signed a deal in 2021to move into local manufacturing with Dutch firm InfraCore to make its lightweight fibreglass bridges and jetties for the Oceania region.
What could become a national centre in South Australia for making lightweight fibre composite road and pedestrian bridges and jetties would initially use foam for pre-forms in manufacturing but Sustainable Infrastructure Systems planned to change to recycled plastic after it bedded down its systems after 18 months.
Sustainable Infrastructure Systems previously was not a manufacturer, although it specialised in the design, engineering and delivery of projects to customers in civil infrastructure, building and construction, oil and gas, mining, aviation, aquaculture, marine and ports, transport and logistics and agriculture. Its fibre-reinforced polymer products were made in China, North America and Europe.
Sustainable Infrastructure Systems would move into manufacturing in the deal with InfraCore that has constructed more than 1000 fibre-reinforced polymer structures – from pedestrian walkways to high-volume traffic and harbour bridges –installed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, England, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, China and the United States.
InfraCorehad built its bridges and other structures in its Rotterdam factory and delivered them prefabricated to sites worldwide. The environmentally-friendly structures were light and strong, with spans up to 36 metres and a 100-year design life and maintenance-free system, based on a composite of structural glass fibres in a thermoset resin matrix.
Former South Australian transport department general manager Luigi Rossi, who guided some of the state’s biggest infrastructure projects including the Adelaide Hills’ Heysen tunnels, joined Sustainable Infrastructure Systems in 2019 and managed its fibre-reinforced polymer program. The company’s structures director Nick Wotton was the son of former South Australian government environment minister David Wotton.
Rossi said the start date for local manufacturing of the Dutch bridges was reliant on InfraCore engineers, in Covid-19 times, being able to travel to Adelaide from the Netherlands to help set up machinery and train staff.
He saw big potential in the fibre-reinforced polymer products, with the New South Wales government announcing 500 bridges across the state needed decks replaced. “We can replace the deck on those bridges very cost effectively because the beauty of our product is (it) is only a third of the weight of an equivalent concrete or steel structure.”
Sustainable Infrastructure Systems had done work with Melbourne and Brisbane city council and Rossi said the company hoped to produce South Australia’s first bridge for a local government council within a week of its local manufacturing plant opening.