Bridon Ropes claims to be the only company in the world that produces wire rope from hot rolled steel, retaining control of the entire development process, from initial product concept and design, through every stage of manufacture, to testing and supply.
Bridon’s history dates back to 1924 when wire rope manufacturer British Ropes was established in Doncaster, UK. The name Bridon was adopted nearly 40 years later, when the company was state owned, with the first three letters coming from British Ropes and the last three from its home town of Doncaster. Bridon was acquired in July 1997 by FKI, an international engineering group quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Bridon’s sister companies within the FKI group include Certex, Acco Chain & Lifting, Parsons Chain, Forge France Sysma and Crosby. Certex’s network of 130 locations in 16 countries is Bridon’s main route to market. Bridon manufactures wire rope at four sites in the UK as well as in Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand and the USA.
With the world market for wire rope having opened up considerably in recent years Bridon is pitching itself clearly at the premium end of the market. Says area sales manager Geoff Holden: ‘We are purposefully moving away from a commodity steel rope business and concentrating on specialist, high quality added value markets, where the superior quality of Bridon Ropes products and services can be clearly seen.’
Central to this market positioning is testing, and Bridon tests its ropes six times, at each stage of the production process: as rod, as ripped feed, as intermediate feed after patenting (heat treatment and dipping), after finished wire drawing, at strand stage, and after it has been spun into rope.
Bridon uses two quality assurance stamps to emphasise the point. The ‘Powercheck’ symbol tells the customer that a sample from each production length has been tested to destruction and has achieved or exceeded the stated minimum breaking force value. The ‘Twistcheck’ symbol specifies that each product type has been tested to confirm its rotational properties.
Bridon says that its Endurance Dyform 34 LR is the market leader where high performance in hostile environments is a customer requirement. Dyform means that the strands of wires have been compacted by drawing them through a die. These Dyform strands are then spun into a rope. Claimed benefits are improvements to: strength, crush resistance, fatigue life, rotation resistance and sheave contact. This is because there is more steel in a given diameter and the wearing surface is smoother, both between adjacent wraps of rope and between the rope and winch drum/sheaves.
Two years ago Bridon introduced the Endurance 50D which, the company says, is ‘leading the way in the competitive crane ropes market’.
Most product development work for the foreseeable future, says Bridon, involves the incorporation of plastic materials into wire ropes, giving improved corrosion protection, improved fatigue performance, and improved diameter retention.
The Endurance 8PI Greenline (PI stands for plastic impregnated) was developed in response to a customer in Germany that required a high performance rope to work on a ‘swimgrab’, in fresh water, in an environmentally sensitive area. The plastic impregnated core is coloured green for clear identification and a special biodegradable lubricant was added to ensure that potential pollutants do not enter the water supply.
Last year Bridon’s German factory produced the world’s heaviest single piece wire rope, weighing 263t, which will be used by Heerema in sub-sea pipe laying operations. In February this year Bridon took an £8m ($12m) order for the Holstein deep water mooring project as part of a long term supply agreement with BP Amoco.
In June the United Arab Emirates National Petroleum Construction Company placed an order for 325t of Bridon Dyform, on five reels. It will be used on an offshore barge for lowering oil pipelines. The longest single rope length is 5.5km of two-inch Dyform 6. Total length of the whole order is 22.25km. Bridon claims it is the largest single shipment of wire rope to be sold anywhere in the world for four years.
Another part of Bridon’s business is its training courses. Bridon’s rope examiner course has been running for 30 years and has been attended by more than 3,000 people from all around the world.
