Mr. Ronnie Dagnin from Petron Engineering has now been a specialised gabion installation company for about 10years, from when I first met him in early 1998 on the Randpark Golf Course where he had to use gabions as an alternative to where sheetpiling had not worked on the course and I provided technical and practical on site support at first.

He initially did extensive gabion works on this golf course only and has now expanded his portfolio including works for many customers throughout Johannesburg, especially in rivers where soil erosion has become a hugh problem. I have worked with Ronnie on some of his projects and always found him to be professional in manner and deliver great looking gabion works. However he has now performed his greatest feat to date by becoming a specialist installer of gabion wall cladding, using the more rigid weldedmesh gabion material for the Architectural community called Gab – Clad walls. Initially he tried using the gabion hexagonal woven mesh material for this purpose but quickly found it too be too flexible and the weldedmesh material was found to be more suitable for this purpose. The work he now does is more of an art form in nature, and I really congratulate him for his efforts and pioneering spirit, as he developed the system and perfected it himself over the past few years.

We will be letting you know more about this relatively new gabion application and really look forward to remarkable new developments from Ronnie in this field. Well done Ronnie, and we look forward to more exciting projects from you and your talented team in the future.

Kindly contact us for any further information you require, view the great photo’s below.

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We recently supplied Galvanised Gabions and geotextiles required for building three Mass-Gravity Gabion mine tip walls near Kolwezi in the Southern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The designs and detailed drawings were undertaken by Gabion Baskets.

All designs were presented to the client together with a B.O.Q. and estimates of rock required and the estimated time for completion of the erection for this project. The founding conditions were poor and advice was also offered to improve the insitu conditions for the founding of the large gabion walls. The walls range in height from 6-12m high. We are also providing on site gabion installation training for the 2 month period estimated to complete the initial gabion structures, gabion tool kits and frames were provided to help made the erection task easier. We hope to also use plant to increase the speed of the gabion infill to complete in a shorter time frame, as the walls fall into the critical path of the project.

Local populations are used for these works, providing much needed work for the local inhabitants. Normally persons can be adequately trained to do the installation of gabions in about 3-5 days, as they are simple to understand.

We will possibly post photo’s of this project on this website for all to see later on, please revisit the website when you next have a chance to view the progress on this interesting project.

Gabions are used extensively in mining applications as rock is normally freely available, and due to their remote localities gabions are often the preferred solution.

Lionel Gilbert at Gilbert Geosynthetics in Durban launched a great looking new website in early August 2008. Kindly use the link to the right hand side of this page to view the website and contact him directly in Durban. He acts as our agent and distributor in Kwazulu Natal and the Eastern Cape for both Class A galvanised gabions and mattresses also provided together with the PVC coating option for corrosive environments.