Cifa receives Guinness World Record for concrete boom pump

Cifa-Zoomlion has received the Guinness World Record for the tallest concrete pump, with a boom of 101m.

It topples the previous record of 86m, held by Zoomlion's rival in the concrete pump industry, Sany. Prior to that pump, Zoomlion had been the holder of the record, for an 80m pump.

The feat was a result of co-operation between Italian and Chinese engineers, and was unveiled at Zoomlion's headquarters in the industrial city of Changsha, China, at the end of September.

The pump has a seven section boom, with the last four sections built from carbon fibre. The pump structure is mounted on an ordinary vehicle chassis, and not on a special vehicle, meaning that it will comply with the maximum dimensions and footprints imposed for road transport.

“The carbon used in the Zoomlion-Cifa 101 pump has a high modulus of elasticity, and is a very different material from the one used in the Carbotech range to date”, said Mauro Cortellini, technical area manager at Cifa.

“There are obviously many other innovative solutions, which we will evaluate at the internal testing stage.”

According to Cifa, over 60 employees worked full-time on the project, from the design stage to production and assembly.

“Zoomlion asked us to make the tallest pump in the world”, said Alessandro Macera, head product manager at the R&D department in Senago, Italy, “and we have been engaged on an amazing feat of co-engineering with our Chinese counterparts since March.

"The Changsha team dealt with the structural and hydraulic aspects, while the Italian team focused on the structure and calculations for the four carbon sections”.

The presentation event, which was kept top secret until the last minute, was held during celebrations of Zoomlion’s 20th anniversary at the end of September.

While the pump remains at a prototype stage, it will be considered for mass-market production, said Davide Cipolla, Cifa’s managing director.

Whether the feat will be matched or out-done by Zoomlion's arch-rival Sany remains to be seen, but there have been industry rumours that Sany has a 100-metre plus pump, which it would unveil in the event that it lost the status of world record holder.

For those keeping track, the world record for the highest concrete pumping is held by Schwing-Stetter, of 715m, which took place at the Parbati Hydroelectric Project in India in 2009.

This eclipsed the previous record of 666m, held by Putzmeister (now Sany) for its pumping at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.