“Never change a winning team”. A phrase often used in sports. You should not change a well working system, but sometimes you have to make a step forward and take on a new challenge to get better results for the future – even in the field of industrial and construction technology. Concrete and steel are such a well relied on team.

So dependable that the two terms melt into one expression “ferroconcrete” – widely used all over the world. Concrete by itself would not stand the high tensile strain that occur in bridge piles, ceiling and paving tiles or in support walls. Steel on the other side has a high tensile strength and is therefore compounded with concrete as rebar to reinforce the concrete.

Not a bad solution, but at CGTEC we believe that there is still room for improvement. The company that is located in the town of Spalt in Middle Franconia dedicated its efforts to new materials. Mainly carbon and glass fiber helped to develop new and innovative concepts.

Their newest development - Basalt fiber bar will be presented in September at the Composite Europe in Stuttgart, which is considered as the future replacement for steel rebar. Compared to basalt fiber, steel rebar has a big disadvantage, it is susceptible to corrosion. So far steel has been covered with large quantities of concrete to protect the steel from air and water so to avoid corrosion and get durable components.

That is not a factor for CGTEC´s basalt fiber reinforced profile bars. It is far more corrosion resistant than steel. Therefore a lot less concrete coverage is needed. Additionally it is lighter, alkali-resistant and nonconducting.

Also the tensile strength of the BFK (basalt fiber reinforced) rebar is a lot higher than usual material, which saves quite some numbers in needed rebar material.

One more advantage is the similar temperature expansion characteristics between concrete and basalt fiber bars. That is the reason that temperature induced tension hardly occurs. CG TEC produces the BFK rebar on highly automated production lines in a single manufacturing process. The bars are easily dimensioned for their individual demands thru this process.

CGTEC wants to draw the attention not only of the construction industry but also to reach all developers and designers that work with new materials.

The basalt fiber, drawn from melt spinning of volcanic stone qualifies for a great variety of applications. The design of the basalt fiber reinforced bar could be a future factor in the fields of medicine technology, mechanical engineering or the automotive industry and fierce rival for carbon and glass fiber. It is similar to these materials in its characteristics (tensile strength, E-modulus, etc.) but has a far better cost-benefit ratio.