This year’s Innovation Award from the Central Switzerland Chamber of Commerce and Industry goes to Mauderli AG. With its prefabricated construction elements, the Schacher company has found a way to make tunnel and road infrastructure more durable.
Miriam Abt 01.10.2024, 05.00 a.m.
On highways, in tunnels, at the train station, on neighborhood streets and in horticulture: many people have probably encountered Mauderli AG without realizing it. Although their products are inconspicuous and often underground, they are not commonplace, according to the jury of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Central Switzerland (IHZ). It awarded Mauderli AG this year’s Innovation Prize for its prefabricated components in tunnel and infrastructure construction. The family-run company from Schachen in Lucerne came out on top against 18 candidates.
Co-owner Christoph Mauderli walks through the production area with hurried steps and speaks in superlatives as he points to the construction elements made of gray special construction material ready for delivery: drainage shafts for the Austrian-Italian Brenner Base Tunnel (“the largest tunnel in the world”), drainage channels for Zurich Airport (“the first of their kind”), in between plastic pipes and shaft covers made of a composite material. The storage area is bursting at the seams.
With the prize money of CHF 10,000, he is planning a celebration for the employees, who have worked hard recently, says Mauderli. He runs the company, which was founded by his father over 50 years ago, together with his brother Philipp. Originally, Mauderli AG was primarily a plastics plant, and it wasn’t until 2018 that the development of the now award-winning components began. The concrete plant is now too small to cope with all the orders.
Not all concrete that is gray
Although concrete is an imprecise term. Ultra-high-performance fiber composite building material or UHPFRC is the name of the brothers’ hobbyhorse, a type of concrete with properties similar to steel. And it is less bulky than it sounds: the special building material takes up less space than ordinary concrete and is therefore many times lighter, as Mauderli explains. While a concrete cable duct weighs around 7.8 tons, its UHPFRC counterpart weighs around 1300 kilograms and is four times thinner.
UHPFRC is abrasion-resistant and resistant to chemicals and seawater, and can also be recycled in the form of concrete granulate – unlike the resinous, sandy polymer concrete that is often used for similar purposes. However, what sets Mauderli AG apart is not the building material itself, but its application: In collaboration with EPFL Lausanne and the Zug-based building materials group Holcim, they have further developed the material, which was invented around 50 years ago, so that it can be used for prefabricated components. Previously, it was used to seal bridges, for example.
From “0 to 1000” in just a few years
The adaptation is called “ZeroUltraone”, has a flat surface and, according to Mauderli, can be cast in any geometry. For elements in Swiss tunnel construction, the building material is now “state of the art”, he says. The Federal Roads Office (Astra) included the components in its technical manual – or the “bible of road infrastructure”, as Mauderli calls it – in the same year that the material was developed.
The first major order followed as soon as it was officially recognized: the so-called Schwamendingen enclosure, a roof over the freeway from the city of Zurich towards the airport (“the largest infrastructure construction site in Switzerland at the time”). At the time, the plastics plant had neither a concrete plant nor employees who could have operated it. The temporary production facility was up and running within four weeks.
“We went from 0 to 1000,” says Christoph Mauderli. At the start of the project, three people worked in the new UHPFRC department, today there are 27. Including the site in Austria, the company employs around 100 people.
Production in Schachen is being expanded
As a result, the family business was able to supply a complete solution across all materials for the first time: in addition to plastic pipe systems, they also supply cable and drainage shafts, covers, tunnel slot channels and kerbstones. Since the pandemic-related supply bottlenecks in 2020, they have also been producing their own formwork, which they use to shape the material. “UHPFRC has made us a system supplier,” says Mauderli. Something that sets the company apart from the competition. And they are not small in the building materials business.
He now wants to continue to expand the product range, “to work with the lead”, explains the Managing Director. But first, the company will expand its production in Schachen: In addition to the second concrete machine, a new production hall is to be built. “Now we’re finally doing something for ourselves,” says Mauderli. And then the path will lead “to the largest construction sites in Europe”.
Recognition prize goes to Obernauer Bächli AG
The Central Switzerland Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHZ) awards a recognition prize in addition to the main prize. This year’s prize goes to Bächli AG. The Obernau-based company manufactures transformers that “impress with their exceptional efficiency and low noise levels”, according to the IHZ press release. Bächli AG employs around 30 people and specializes in the development of electrotechnical components.
Schacher Mauderli AG wins the IHZ Innovation Award. With its components, it has found a way to make infrastructure more durable.
