Dateline: August 29, 2025, Alina Mallett
Not just a tagline for Brock® USA, but a mantra for finding higher performance, more sustainable solutions to products used in their turf fields. For over 26 years, Brock USA has been a pioneer in athlete safety, revolutionizing the sports field industry with an innovative shock pad technology. Part of this revolution surrounds their Brockfill®, engineered infill for sports turf.
Brock sources southern yellow pine timbers and brings them onsite, where the material undergoes a meticulous 12-step process. This ensures that each batch of infill has precise dimensions and consistency, allowing it to effectively absorb moisture, reduce surface temperatures by up to 30°F, and provide a more grass-like experience.
Brock turned to BE&E for the SMART Conveyor™ system, which plays a key role in transporting the pulpwood to a customized sub-micro chipper. The chipper reduces the wood to the required 1/8” to 3/16” size. The material is then sent to a dryer for moisture control and further refining, ultimately resulting in an infill size of 3mm–5mm—about the size of rice grains. Once processed, the SMART Conveyors™ efficiently move the finished infill to bagging stations for distribution.
Brock’s first plant had started out with vulcanized rubber belts, but soon determined that they were inefficient and facilitated a considerable amount of dust and debris. The original conveyors consisted of two belted conveyors running parallel, with a bucket conveyor traveling to another conveyor belt, suspended 35’ above. These were soon replaced with a single SMART Conveyor line. The conveyors were introduced at the time of a small expansion to the production line. It was quickly noticed that the dust-tight construction made a measurable improvement in the cleanliness of the workspace, while providing worry-free performance. As time went on, approximately six additional SMART conveyor lines were brought in to support the downstream bagging operations. An additional line was later added in place of the belt conveyors to help mitigate dust and debris from the work area.
The Second growth phase brought expansion and the relocation of operations to a more spatial lot, specifically to one of their facilities in Georgia. With that move Brock took advantage of reconfiguring the production layout to add production efficiency. The original SMART Conveyers were figured into this move and even modified to meet new design elements. The modular nature of the conveyor 5’ sections made it easy to dismantle, transport, and reassemble them, ensuring minimal downtime. The team managed to move the entire facility, including all the conveyors, in just 10 days. Reassembly took roughly the same amount of time. Because of the design flexibility, additional straight sections and a few 45-degree sections were switched out to configure the new layout. Additionally, a 20’ SMART Container™ made the move- acting as the infeed hopper for manufacturing.
Since the new plant is running at higher capacity with steeper inclines, the conveyors needed to be modified to handle the change in chain size and increased motor speed without any issue. Upon reassembly, the conveyors started without incident, allowing for additional scenarios to be tested at varying speeds.
According to John Shaffer, Project Manager at Brock® USA, “We’ve been able to solve a lot of issues since moving. Once we got into operation and had a firmer idea of how much material we are moving, everything has ran flawlessly.” John stated that taking advantage of the modular nature of the SMART Conveyors, allowed them to change out some components and reformat the conveyors versus ordering new ones. It is figured that this resulted in savings of somewhere between $350k and $500k.
At BE&E, we design, and build drag conveyors and other bulk handling equipment tailored to your specific needs. Consequently, our work is engineered to provide performance, reliability, and responsiveness. Our staff has first-hand experience in the biomass sector. As a result, we listen to better understand your needs. Then we engineer a solution to suit your requirements with optimal, efficient layouts.
To read more about SMART Conveyors, visit here.
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