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Metal maker aims to shields buildingsChicago firm's steel box praised as attack barrier.
A family-owned Chicago company has developed what it hopes is a brute-force solution to a big problem: how to protect vital facilities and personnel against suicide attacks by car and truck bombers. Chain link fences are easily penetrated, and concrete barriers turn into shrapnel when a bomb goes off nearby. The answer that Corrugated Metals Inc. has come up with: a big steel box, roughly the size of a cargo container, filled with sand. "I don't know anyone else who has a product like that," says Dennis Collins, vice-president of Nuclear Security Services Corp., a consulting firm in Willowbrook. The resulting barrier, called the Metalith, will soon be protecting and Air Force base in Afghanistan, and Corrugated Metals is negotiating to deploy it in Iraq and federal nuclear plants in the U.S., among other prime terrorism targets, according to a company official. The Metalith also has been approved by the U.S. State Department for use in vehicle barrier at embassies abroad. "This is our future," says Thomas J. Carlton, Infrastructure Defense Technologies' vice-president of marketing. "It's almost a complete solution to a very likely threat." The 118-year-old company which has 28 employees in a 98,000-square-foot plant in the Southwest Side, uses special alloy to make heavy-duty corrugated metal for constructing buildings such as pulp and paper mills that must withstand highly corrosive conditions. Now, Corrugated Metals is eyeing a 20-fold expansion in sales to $300 million and more then 300 employees within three years, based on its estimates of "vulnerable perimeters" in the U.S, alone. In an independently conducted test last year, a van that can hold 15 passengers was filled with explosives and detonated at varying distances from five Metalith structures. At 20 feet away, about 90% of the blast was absorbed by the steel and sand; at 40 feet away, more then 98%. Another test involved a crash by a 15,000-pound truck at 50 miles per hour, which failed to penetrate the wall of a 10-foot-high Metalith. That test qualified the structure to be certified K12, the State Department's highest standard for vehicle barriers. It's "much more durable and stronger" than current vehicle barriers in use, says Wahid Hakki, vice-president of Contrack International Inc., a construction firm in Virginia with an Army contract to deploy the Metalith in Afghanistan. "There will be a market for these." "It looks like and extraordinarily efficient perimeter protection equipment that can be set up fast," says Edward Badalato, executive vice-president of Shaw Group Inc., a Baton Rouge, LA-based engineering firm that builds and operates nuclear power plants and refineries. The Metalith "certainly would have saved a lot of lives and property damage" if it had been available, he adds in places such as Beirut and Nigeria, where U.S. government facilities were attacked by truck bombs in the past. Cost varies according to the size of the structure, which can range from 3 feet wide and 6 feet high to 8 feet wide and 16 feet high. A typical application would roughly be $1.5 million a mile or $400 per linear foot installed, says Mr. Carlton, the marketing vice-president. That's less then the cost of Jersey barriers, or "less than wrought iron," he says. -- Article excerpted from Crain's Chicago Business, February 2005. Call us today at 1-800-621-5617, email us at sales@themetalith.com, or send a fax using 773-254-1106 to get an immediate quote for your perimeter security problems. Stop them before they cause serious security issues, critical infrastructure damage, or disaster.
Metalith Product Info | Exterior Finishes | Benefits | Applications The Metalith Copyright ©2003-2008 Infrastructure Defense Technologies. |
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