ABS Plastic Formwork for Cold Storage Columns and Walls

A food processing and cold storage complex in a continental-climate region of Eastern Europe, built as a two-storey structure with a mezzanine over the plant room. The cast-in-place concrete scope covered the perimeter walls, the internal walls dividing the chiller and freezer rooms, and a grid of square columns carrying sizes between 300 mm and 600 mm on the structural drawings. The building envelope was fixed back to the concrete with cast-in anchors and insulated panels, so the column and wall faces had to land inside a tolerance rather than simply look straight. Construction ran through a winter that dropped below freezing most nights, and the client wanted the internal wall surfaces struck smooth enough that no lining or rendering would be needed behind the hygienic cladding.

The first formwork on site was plywood, and the cold broke it down. Boards took on moisture from the wet concrete and from the wash-down water, then froze overnight; the faces delaminated, the sawn edges swelled, and panel dimensions drifted until the anchors set out from those edges started to miss the tolerance on the drawings. Columns came off worse, because the grid carried six or seven different column sizes and the carpentry team had a separate box built for each one, with every box trued and re-braced before it could be reused. Panels were also handled hard on a working plant, dropped from the mezzanine, struck by rebar ends and levered apart at the corners, and the plywood edges broke down quickly under that treatment. What the contractor needed was formwork whose dimensions did not change with the weather.

The site moved onto an ABS plastic modular formwork system. Wall panels are moulded from ABS virgin material, with the main panel at 1200 x 600 mm weighing 9.70 kg and covering 0.72 m², backed by a range of filler and soffit pieces down to 150 x 200 mm, so a wall face was set out in whole modules and closed out with the small units instead of cutting board on site. Two workers carry and set the main panels without mechanical lifting, which kept the wall cycles moving through the short winter days.

Columns were formed with the ABS adjustable square column formwork, supplied as four panels plus clips per set, each unit adjusting through a 100 mm range, so one stock of column panels served a series of sizes across the grid rather than one plywood box per column. Panel connections use installation handles and fitting clips, and alignment crossbars with steel back braces hold the face plane, while tie rods, nuts and plastic sleeves run through the wall thickness or across the column. Inclined supports brace the free-standing panels before each pour. Because the moulded ABS keeps its dimensions under moisture and low temperature, and carries impact better than a board face, the panels survived the handling that had wrecked the plywood. The moulded surface does not bond to concrete, so after stripping the panels were rinsed with water and stacked flat, with no form oil to apply and no board repair bench on site. Replaceable corner guards absorb the wear at the levering points and keep the panel edges true.

The measurement problem disappeared with the plywood. Because the moulded panels held their size through freeze and thaw, the cast anchors landed inside the envelope tolerance without re-drilling, and the cladding sub-contractor stopped coming back for remedial work. Columns were struck with sharp arrises and flat faces, and the adjustable column sets covered the whole grid from one stock of panels instead of a stack of one-off boxes. Stripping ran noticeably faster than the board formwork it replaced, and the same panels were still in service at the end of the winter programme, with corner guards the only consumable replaced.

Site feedback focused on handling rather than speed. The crew reported that a dropped panel no longer meant a scrapped panel, which had been the largest single source of waste on the plywood set-up, and the supervisor noted that there was no board store to keep dry, no oil to apply before a pour, and no face repair between uses. The internal walls came out smooth enough that the hygienic cladding went straight onto the concrete.

Contractors and developers planning repetitive column and wall work on cold storage, food processing or industrial projects are welcome to send their structural drawings for a plastic formwork configuration review and a project-specific quotation.