A gap in the market

The idea of a manufactured wedge was born a few years ago, when Laurent Placé was still technical-salesman manager in a scaffolding company.
A safety commission asked him to justify the stability of a scaffolding construction.
After seven years in the entertainment department of Disneyland Resort Paris, Laurent Placé was used to solve structural problems and was aware of the need for normative framing of provisional structures.
How could an item by item controlled structure which is following standards be put on an element without guarantee of resistance?
The need for a normative framed wedge, referenced with all the items of the structure, was obvious.

  A real desire to become a contractor

Laurent Placé trained to become a manager, acquired a patent, surrounded himself by a qualified team, filled a lot of forms to obtain grants (in particular Crittmeca Ile de France and Oséo) and set up his business.
The search for a laboratory to build the wedge was hard but eventually led to a key contact. The manufactured wedge, ensuring technical performance and protection of construction workers, was born.

  Safety increased, painfulness reduced

Provided with an abacus distribute the weight out on various types of ground and various climatic conditions, the wedges are assembled in order to support up to 7.4 tons, which is the maximum loading of a structure.
To know the resistance of the wedge, tests have been carried out : with regards to compression, deformation, slip, material adhesion, shocks, heat, cleaner with high pressure, fire (for the M2 fireproof option).
Abutments on the top of the wedge stabilize the scaffolding. Nails are no longer needed to maintain the base of the structure. Besides to time saving, the painfulness of the work is reduced.

  Tracability

80 % of wood wedges are never returned after use.
With their serial number, the EKISTACK wedges go from a consumable good to a referred product and integral parts of the structure.
Rental equipment can be set up to reply to customer’s requests, ensuring fast profitability.

  Benefits of the Ekistack wedges: storage, ecology and customisation

Like Lego, EKISTACK wedges encase ones with the other. This makes the storage easier on pallets, for transportation or stock-taking.
They are the solution to the technical constraints defined by Syndicat français de l’Échafaudage du Coffrage et de l’Étaiement and have also been designed for the environmental safeguarding.
The material chosen, containing polyethylene comes from recycling materials and can be recycled after use, even with its fireproofing agent. EKISTACK accepts returned wedges up to 3 years after their end-of-circle.
Nowadays, being a new high quality product is not enough; it must be part of the communication strategy of the company. In this way EKISTACK wedges have been made to be a new support of communication. They can wear the colour and the logo of your company.

  Creation of Promical, research and development

Promical was first created, in 2009, to create and develop the wedges and all the accessories designed to facilitate the use of the wedges. It exploits the patent.

  Creation of Ekistack

EKISTACK Company was created in 2010 to market the products developed by Promical and to find new outlets.
The wedges are now referred to in the EDF purchase catalogue (French Electricity Company) to equip their nuclear plants.