From its base in the heart of England, the company has gone from strength to strength developing and supplying its own line of patented customer focused foundation pile cropping solutions to a wide variety of customers. 

Fully customisable length and diameter wise concrete foundation piles for all types of ground conditions, have been, and are, used for various civil engineering and construction structures, with common applications ranging from small housing developments to major inner-city renovation, construction and infrastructure projects, such as HS2.  Historically concrete foundation piles were reduced using methods such as hand-held breakers and other inaccurate, expensive and emission producing methods. These outdated methods further risked damaging the integrity of the piles and gave rise to associated health problems such as HAV (Hand Arm Vibration syndrome) and the very real risks associated with manual work within unstable/subterranean ground conditions.  In direct response to these problems, hydraulic pile croppers have been developed, becoming widely advocated by health and safety professionals and engineers alike, becoming the industry standard from the late 1990’s onwards. 

Intelligent solution

A pile cropper itself (also known as a pile cutter or pile breaker) is a very precise hydraulic shear with defined angles of deflection and points of contact ensuring a clean cut of the excess that does not interfere with the efficacy of the remaining pile. There are a breadth of different types and sizes of croppers, designed specifically for the breadth and range of piles including augured, bearing, contiguous, secant, CFA, trench and helical displacement, with availability in varying sizes ranging normally from 300mm to 1,200mm in diameter.  All in all, the National Pile Cropper team have been central to the introduction and evolution of the pile croppers, with all NPC croppers being designed to ensure that construction workers can get the job done as safely and efficiently as possible. 

NPC was created by a management team to fully refine customer focused pile cropping solutions. In doing this the team have utilised their 100 years+ of amassed concrete foundation industry experience. Their unprecedented knowledge and passion ensure the supply of the correctly identified equipment, in a fully serviced state, suited for site specific applications, on time, and at competitive price levels. Since its formation, the company has created a complete range of in-house designed, manufactured and maintained pile cropping equipment, which has revolutionised the pile cropping industry. NPC is the only fully vertically integrated pile cropper company taking its products from 3D CAD models all the way through manufacture and into their operation on site.

Customer focus

One of the core aims on founding National Pile Croppers was to provide a unique, customer focused solution geared to making customers more efficient, safe, productive and profitable.  “National Pile Croppers range of machines give a far superior cut and better productivity at less overall cost to anything else in the marketplace. We listen to the comments of our valued clients, making adjustments and improvements to croppers as necessary, designing bespoke croppers for larger projects as required,” explains company managing director Simon Price, who added: “Our unique patented designs, continuous product improvement programme and rigorous R&D, ensure customers get a reliable and robust machine. Our croppers intuitively reduce any need for personnel to be positioned near the breakdown of piles removing the risk of injury, with the safety of site operatives being the top priority in the design of each National Pile Cropper model.

 “NPC hydraulic croppers are the most advanced, efficient and time saving system in the world for reducing concrete foundation piles. Using an NPC pile cropper results in a perfect horizontal finish, undamaged reinforcement and no cracks or spalling below cut-off level when used as advised by our team of professionals. Our innovative thinking utilises the latest technologies making it possible to break square, hexagonal, octagonal and circular shaped piles at up to 200 piles per day,” concluded Simon.

As well as having an industry leading product range, National Pile Croppers stands ahead of the generalist hire desks due to its depth of product knowledge and levels of customer service.  All customers deal with the same pile cropping expert and are assigned an individual contact at the hire desk who will deal with the customer from the beginning to the very end of the hire period.  The aim is provide a highly personal service that reflects the experience and industry know-how of the company, with all equipment manufactured, maintained and operated by in house industry professionals.  All hires (and if so required, equipment sales) are competitively priced and available with 24/7 support. 

www.nationalpilecroppers.com