Wes Long: Bringing HDPE On Site With Tubi Group
P
ipes are a vital element of water infrastructure, and many projects require miles of pipe to complete. The transportation and fusion of large pipe segments is often both expensive and time consuming, and multisection pipes also have more possible failure points. Tubi Group set about to make the fabrication, transportation, and installation of pipes better by creating onsite plants that fabricate pipe at the site where it is needed. In this interview, Wes Long, Tubi Group’s chief operating officer, tells Irrigation Leader how the onsite plants work and their advantages over traditional offsite construction facilities.
Tubi’s dolly system is effective and capable in all terrains.
Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the history of Tubi.
22 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2021
Tubi’s dolly system moves large-diameter pipe and eliminates pipe dragging and damage.
Tubi produces 500-foot lengths of pipe on site and eliminates 90 percent of pipe joints.
Tubi manufactures pipe with outer diameters from 4 to 26 inches.
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF TUBI.
Wes Long: Marcello Russo began the business in 2009. His father owned a large plastic pipe manufacturing factory in Australia that made PVC pipe, polyethylene pipe, and other types of plastic pipe. When the family elected to sell the business, Marcello obtained a share of it, and instead of rebuilding or opening another factory, he thought there might be a better way to make manufactured high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe. He came up with the idea of what we call mobile or onsite extrusion manufacturing. He designed special modules to house extruders, vacuum tanks, cooling tanks, and all their downstream equipment, creating mobile extrusion plants. These are turnkey plants that use Battenfeld technology, the finest extrusion technology in the world. Our plants have the highest throughput or output rates in pounds per hour of any equipment today. We don’t sacrifice anything by doing mobile extrusion. In fact, we have better technology than nearly all the brickand-mortar HDPE pipe manufacturers, a lot of which are still using older equipment and technology that doesn’t run at the highest rates or output or use the in-line quality control that Tubi runs today. We have two brand-new plants, one in Florida and one in Odessa, Texas, plus an original plant in Odessa, Texas. The two new plants have the latest technology, the newest extrusion capability, and the newest quality-control systems. Our new plant in Florida is located at a base site with main electric power in Bartow, Florida, which is a mobile extrusion site but also a permanent location from which we can serve Florida and the entire southeastern United States with truckload deliveries of pipe just like any other pipe manufacturer. We are planning to build an additional base site in Arizona to serve the vast mining business there.
