All States Concrete Equipment is the distributor of Ligchine equipment in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It is the only equipment in the All States range that is not manufactured in-house.
Ligchine designs and manufactures highly reliable laser-guided screeds using cutting-edge technology to automate the process of flat finishing concrete. Ligchine equipment is essential in the construction of every structure, building, warehouse or facility that requires a flat floor. Ligchine’s product portfolio is comprised of a full line of high-performance boom-operated screeds and a new revolutionary drive-in machine that offers the greatest mobility and highest flatness numbers ever achieved by a drive-in machine. All machines can be custom-configured to operate with multiple machine control systems including laser, GPS (satellite) and LPS (robotic).
Ligchine equipment is essential in the construction of every structure, building, warehouse or facility that requires a flat floor. The Ligchine product portfolio offers advanced boom-operated screeds with industry-leading performance, as well as compact, lightweight and manoeuvrable drive-in systems for upper deck concrete and slab-on-grade screeding applications.
Sven Schutte, founder of All States Africa Concrete Equipment, says: “These laser-guided screeds are made in the US. We now have the agency for these Ligchine machines and it generates a lot of interest in concrete flooring as the brand name has a considerable reputation. The latest version, the Spider Screed, won an innovation award for screeds in the US World of Concrete exhibition show two years in a row. It is the latest and most sophisticated equipment that everyone wants to ‘test drive’. Given this level of interest, it requires a fair amount of consulting to contractors to determine if it is appropriate to their needs and volume of work.
“The Ligchine lays concrete paving so fast that it is only recommended for large projects. If one does jobs of 200-300m2 then the machine will spend most of its time idle waiting for the concrete to arrive – it is that fast. There is no question about the efficiency of the machine, whether it is appropriate to a contractor’s needs is determined by all the surrounding factors of a particular project. In one project a client did in George, to meet the efficiency of the Ligchine we had to have two entire concrete plants working only to supply that project for the entire day.”
Schutte has calculated that even though the Ligchine is expensive, if a contractor is sufficiently busy and able to use the machine all day, it would be paid off within 12 to 18 months.
“We will often have to explain to a potential customer to rather build up their business for now, and when they have the volume of work to justify such a machine, only then buy it. Sometimes, customers are shocked that instead of just supplying them with what they want to buy, we look at their entire business and construction process and methodology and size of their order book. Through this process, though they wanted one item, we are able to advise them holistically on all their needs and develop a tailored package better suited to their current growth trajectory for them to rather consider,” says Schutte.
“My passion is not simply selling. I come with a contractor’s viewpoint and want to provide customers with a solution, one which tells them what equipment they need and what we can appropriately supply. Although we have the best equipment to sell, our focus is rather on helping each customer to solve challenges unique to their business.”
A demo model of the Spider Screed arrived in South Africa on 14 March and is currently being loaned out to various larger contractors for them to try out and possibly buy.
Schutte points out that a local subcontractor using old-fashioned manual techniques will often be able to under-price a large contractor using a Ligchine – but the difference becomes extremely evident in the quality of the finish. Using cheap techniques often plays out in higher costs elsewhere in a project – for instance, in a tiler having to use large amounts of tile adhesive to make the floor straight, and also taking a week to do a job which a Ligchine could be done in a single day thereby saving weeks on a project. “Main contractors are often not doing this risk analysis and calculation but offering work to the lowest bidder in what is a cutthroat market. My role is to get them to do that cost analysis,” he says.
