Plastic pipe manufacturer Polypipe Building Services has invested £1.5m in automation, £3m in moulding machinery and £2.5m in extrusion technology at its 24-hour, five-day Aylesford plant, moving key lines to fully automated operation. Six-axis and Cartesian robots now handle production and packaging, while an IV4 AI vision camera counts parts and flags dimensional variation, ovality and moulding defects before dispatch. Operator loading has shifted from one operator per machine to typically one per four machines, with staff redeployed and further automation planned in the fabrication department.

The UK Concrete Show 2026 at Birmingham’s NEC on 25–26 March will run a seminar programme centred on decarbonisation, materials innovation, digital monitoring, performance verification, and skills development for concrete producers and specifiers. Sessions will address low‑carbon binders and mix designs, sensor‑based monitoring of pours and in‑service structures, and verification of performance against evolving standards. The focus on skills suggests practical content for contractors, precast manufacturers, and designers needing to integrate new materials and digital QA/QC into existing workflows.

SAMI Bitumen Technologies has opened a new technical centre to expand research and development of bitumen additives and performance enhancers for Australian road construction and maintenance. The facility centralises laboratory testing, product formulation and quality control for polymer-modified binders, emulsions and warm-mix technologies, improving collaboration between SAMI’s technical teams and its large-scale production network. For pavement designers and asset owners, the centre signals faster validation of high-performance binders and more consistent field performance data for heavily trafficked highways and sprayed-seal networks.