Company anniversary: 25 years of Elbe Decken
The manufacturer of prestressed concrete floor slabs, the company Elbe delcon GmbH – Elbe Decken, celebrates, in the summer of 2021, its 25th anniversary. The plant was founded in 1996 by the building contractor Ewald Endris, of the Deisen Group, and by a manufacturer of prestressed concrete from Belgium. In 2013, the plant went 100 % to the Endris Group and is since a subsidiary of the building contractor. The medium-sized prestressed concrete floor slab plant Elbe Decken has 20 production lines and around 40,000 m² of storage areas. According to its own statement, this makes it the largest production plant for prestressed concrete floor slabs in Europe. Around 300,000 m² of prestressed concrete floor slabs are manufactured annually in Plants I and II and are delivered spot-on schedule for installation at the construction site.
“In recent years we have continuously grown and are pleased that we as a medium-sized company are obviously as robust as our floor slabs. The success of our plant is most of all due our workforce, which is highly motivated and often provides much valuable personal input for the plant,” explains Lars Klötzer, Operations Manager of Elbe Decken. Many large-scale projects and specialized real-estate projects have been realized with Elbe Decken: for example the ZAL Tech Center in Hamburg, Siemenswerk Mülheim, the InnovationsCampus 8 in Wolfsburg, the Vital-Hotel at the Rhine-Main Spa and the Tolkewitz School Complex in Dresden, for which Elbe delivered around 10,000 m² of prestressed concrete floor slabs.
The future of building is serial
In Germany, serial building has always been a niche market, while in other countries up to 70 % of projects are realized with prestressed concrete floor slabs – for example, in the Netherlands, Poland and Great Britain. In Germany, the proportion is significantly lower than 10 %: but that could change. By now, not only industrial structures, but also high-quality residential buildings are being erected with precast elements. The framework agreement of the Federal Association of German Housing and Real Estate Companies (GdW) is an example for this development. In this agreement, variable serially conceived multi-family homes are offered in a catalogue by various suppliers.
Building with prestressed concrete construction, for example, could be faster and usually less costly than with conventional building methods. In addition, quality assurance in precast construction is easier to achieve, because many work processes are already completed and checked before the product is installed.
New developments at Elbe Decken
“Well designed, robustly built” – the new slogan for the Elbe Decken anniversary says it all. Characteristic for Elbe Decken are the special product developments that the company has brought to the market in the last twenty years. For example, in 2005, it introduced the solid floor slab based on the 50 Jumbo Slab – a floor slab for extreme loads and spans of up to 18 m. In 2007, the sustainable Elbe HVAC floor slab with integrated cooling and heating came to the market and, most recently, the 40-KM floor slab for thin profiles with high loadbearing capacity. For its own products, Elbe specialists from the Distribution team developed suitable lifting gear for every application to ensure perfect application at the construction site. An innovative development since 2013 was supply of a major portion of production, around 40 %, with solar power from a solar panel system.
For the future, Dipl.-Ing. Lars Klötzer, plans to digitize work procedures further and to develop new prestressed concrete solutions. A new addition is also a newsletter with technical information on building and prestressed concrete subjects, which will play a significant role.
