Company Announcement - Transfer points are finally being recognised as key elements in plants, and Mark Baller, managing director of Weba Chute Systems, says this has seen other players enter the market as they too begin to recognise transfer points as critical to the operational success of plants. “As the market leader with more than 4 000 Weba Chute Systems successfully operating globally, we welcome legitimate competition as it keeps companies motivated and customers are ensured of continual improvement in both product and service delivery,” he says. Significantly, the global benchmark for transfer points is the Weba Chute System. Weba Chute Systems pioneered the engineered transfer point and extensive research and development by the company identified the root causes of numerous problems related to materials handling and transfer points. These include lack of material control resulting in excessive impact and poor belt loading, disproportionate wear, excessive dust emissions and spillage.

Today the Weba Chute System is a custom engineered transfer point solution designed to address the numerous issues plants face with material movement. Each chute system is engineered for the specific application and this is what accounts for the success that these transfer points have achieved worldwide.

Baller says that what makes it difficult for new entrants to get it correct is that there are so many factors which affect the material during its movement through the plant. Add to this, he says, each transfer point will have completely different requirements depending on what stage of the process flow the material is at. “Experience cannot be underestimated when it comes to correctly engineering a chute system as each application is completely different,” he says.

“Weba Chute Systems has an enormous advantage over the newbies given that we have over 25 years’ experience and a reference base that dates back that far,” Baller says. Each of the chute system solutions provided by Weba Chute Systems was a custom engineered transfer point designed to specifically deal with the exact application requirements.

During the design phase all aspects such as belt speed, belt width, material size, shape and throughput are taken into account. The custom design allows control of the direction, flow and velocity of a calculated volume and type of material in each individual application and at the same time drastically reduces dust. Using a ‘supertube’ or cascade scenario 95% of the material runs on material in a tumbling motion which further reduces wear.

“Weba Chute Systems takes great pride in fact that the transfer point is no longer the stepchild of the process plant and has been given its rightful position as an integral and important part of the operation,” Baller says.