Thin Surfacing – Sealing
Binders, including bitumen products, bitumen emulsions
Binders play a critical role in enhancing road performance, durability, and sustainability and reducing maintenance needs. Downer’s suite of binders targets specific customer and performance requirements and environmental conditions.
Bitumen products
In Australia, our standard binders—C170, C320, and C600, and range of asphalt binders in New Zealand (such as BarrierBind, BioBine, and EnviroBind), enhance structural consistency across various road types. In New Zealand and Australia our Polymer Modified Bitumen (PMBs) provide significant advancements to the rheological properties of bitumen and improves the pavement response to repetitive loads and resistance to deformation, making them particularly suitable for high-stress locations such as intersections and freight corridors. The use of PMBs contributes to increased pavement durability and reduces overall lifecycle costs by substantially minimising cracking and rutting.
Bitumen emulsions
Our innovative bitumen emulsions provide several safety, sustainable and quality outcomes. Bitumen emulsions are applied at lower temperatures —– improving safety outcomes by significantly reducing burns and explosion risks and offer up to 50 percent lower carbon emissions. Their strong adhesion and versatility in both dry and damp conditions make them a reliable choice for a range of environments, including State Highways, regional roads and remote networks.
- Multibond SS – is a cationic rapid set, water-based emulsion with superior performance compared to conventional CRS 170/60 emulsions. Developed by Downer for use in road construction, particularly for primer sealing in asphalt and patching operations, or cold application spray sealing on sealed and unsealed road.
- EcoPrime – offers improved environmental performance compared to traditional cutback primes. EcoPrime demonstrates shear bond strength up to five times greater than that of conventional cutback primes. It exhibits reduced sensitivity to surface moisture, eliminates the need for heating, and provides penetration performance comparable to standard SP30 cutback primes, while avoiding the environmental and safety risks inherent to traditional cutback products.
- EcoGrip is a high binder content bitumen emulsion developed by Downer for spray sealing applications. It is polymer modified and designed to deliver superior performance, with enhanced flexibility and durability, especially in high-traffic or extreme temperature zones.
Crumb rubber
Downer offers crumb rubber seals as part of its spray and chip sealing services. These are integrated with other technologies like geofabric reinforced seals (GRS), polymer-modified binders, and emulsions. In Western Australia, Downer has developed in-house roadside field blending equipment that allows crumb rubber to be used in remote locations.
