D.S. Brown’s Cableguard Wrap Helps Bring the Manhattan Bridge into Its Second Century

NORTH BALTIMORE, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The nearby Brooklyn Bridge may get all the tourists, but the Manhattan Bridge is one of the oldest, largest and busiest of New York City’s 2,027 bridges. And, just past the Manhattan’s 100^th birthday, The D.S. Brown Company, leading worldwide designer, supplier and manufacturer of engineered products for the bridge and highway industry, is helping to ensure the cable-suspension bridge will enjoy another 100 years.

“The Manhattan Bridge is a great example of America’s enormous investment in critical infrastructure”

New Yorkers in trucks, buses, cars and subways, as well as on foot or bicycles, crossing the 6,855-foot bridge surface (main span is 1,470 feet) may never notice, but the work on the Manhattan’s 21.5-inch-diameter suspension cable (total length an impressive 3,224 foot) is a delicate wrap job of highly specialized materials that should extend its life by decades.

“The Manhattan Bridge is a great example of America’s enormous investment in critical infrastructure,” said Kirk Feuerbach, President and CEO of D.S. Brown. “Properly maintained – and with investment in materials and processes that simply didn’t exist 100 years ago – we can ensure that this amazing bridge will continue to serve the needs of New Yorkers for decades to come.”

Some 185,000 linear feet of D.S. Brown’s Cableguard™ Elastomeric Cable Wrap System wrap is being applied in the Manhattan Bridge project. Developed exclusively for bridge cables, the patented material is an elastomeric cable wrap that is colorfast without applying paint, is heated in place to fuse the seams of the overlapped wrap and to shrink the wrap snug against the underlying cable, and applied under tension with an automatic wrapping device.

Working with Skanska Koch of Carteret, NJ, the prime contractor, and design engineer Weidlinger Associates of New York City, the job is expected to be completed in June 2013.

Thomas H. Lewis, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, said, “Corrosion is the enemy of cable-supported bridges. Because of the danger of premature failure of corrosion protection systems on cable-supported structures, D.S. Brown began development of its patented Cableguard™ Elastomeric Cable Wrap System in the early 1990s. This alternative corrosion protection system can be applied during construction or rehabilitation of cable-stayed and suspension bridges.”

About The D.S. Brown Company

Founded in 1890, The D.S. Brown Company is a leading worldwide designer, supplier and manufacturer of engineered products for the bridge and highway industry. D.S. Brown's home office and manufacturing facilities are located in North Baltimore, Ohio. D.S. Brown is fully integrated, performing and controlling all manufacturing processes internally: Research and Development; Engineering Design/CAD Detailing; Extruding, Molding, and Testing; Custom Steel Fabrication and Machining.

D.S. Brown is a portfolio company of Altus Capital Partners, Inc., an investment firm specializing in middle market manufacturing companies based in the U.S.