About Us
Our parent company Screwpile Engineering Pty Ltd through
its trading arm Screwpile Australia introduced screwpile
and screw-anchor technology to the Australian Market in
1994. Since then it has successfully installed in excess
of 4.5 million steel screw-in piles to the Australian
construction, mining, marine industries for all types of
structural load carrying applications.
Fifteen years of extensive in-house R&D has resulted
in the development of the fastest, most reliable, cost
effective piling and anchoring system in the world
today. A system that provides multiple advantages over
conventional methods. Screwpiles have the capacity to
resist large loads being manufactured up to 1.0m in
diameter and installed to depths of over 30m. The
technology behind Screwpiles is centered around rigid
steel components so that deflections are kept to an
absolute minimum.
Birth of the wombat
This design criteria for screwpiles meant that nobody
ever contemplated introducing composite materials into
their development until inventor Steve Lewenhoff started
to experiment with hi-resilient hi-strength materials.
He discovered something very unique. Composite helix’s
expand as they are wound into the ground. During this
process the helix compresses and compacts the soil
around it, acting like a clamp underground, thereby
producing greater holding capacities when compared with
its steel cousin. He noticed that after multiple
installations in the same area the soil level had
dropped significantly. That’s when he knew he was on to
something theoretically quite different.
Small screw-in type anchors had been around for a while.
However they were never successfully introduced into the
market as they were not cost effective to produce and
did not work particularly well in shallow ground. As CEO
and Director of a number companies involved in ground
breaking technologies, inventor Steve Lewenhoff,
recognized the potential markets for a very strong light
weight, reusable & easy to use, cost effective
ground anchor. In a previous life he owned and operated
a plastics engineering company that specialized in
prototype development. The current WOMBAT products are a
result of his expertise and over 3 years of designing
& developing different helix configurations using
different composite materials. Skeptics initially did
not believe or want to recognize there was a significant
difference in holding capacities between the same size
of anchor of a steel v’s composite helix until they
witnessed it with their own eyes. Intellectual Property
Patents were applied for around the world and the
products were launched internationally.
The WOMBAT ground anchor is now recognized as the
world’s strongest reusable shallow ground anchor and has
won numerous invention & development awards
throughout Australia, including the ABC’s “New
Inventors”, BIAWA 2007 “Most Innovative Product Award”
and has just been awarded the BIAWA 2009 “Most
Innovative Product Award” through its combined use with
our new “Octopus” Temporary Boat Mooring System.