Custom GRC Planter Boxes, Pots and Troughs

Satu Bumi specializes in the design and manufacture of “Custom GRC Solutions” to suit specific customer requirements. With a large product engineering team of skilled designers, mould makers and artisans, Satu Bumi is well placed to produce virtually any realistic shape and size GRC planter, trough, pot or landscaping product.

Interested in Custom GRC Planter Boxes for your project?

Satu Bumi adheres to a strong set of quality management processes to ensure it delivers what its customers expect in terms of design intent, product quality, customer service, and delivery expectations. Therefore, when designing customised planters for a customer’s project, Satu Bumi follows the process as depicted in the following diagrams. This process includes both Pre-Commitment and a Post-Commitment Stages. The Pre-Commitment Stage is part of Satu Bumi’s free customer service offering and during this stage the customer does not incurr any costs or have any requirement to make any commercial commitments. If the customer is comfortable with what Satu Bumi has provided in the Pre-Commitment Stage, the customer places and order and an agreed deposit as the trigger to enter the preparation of the releveant shop drawings for the required custom designs and the commencement of the manufacture and delivery of the relevant planters.

The quickest and easiest ways to find out if Satu Bumi can assist with your next GRC project is to send an email to Satu Bumi at sales@satubumi.com.au outlining your requirements, or to request to speak directly to an experienced consultant on (03) 5292 1001.
Whether or not you choose to communicate directly with a Satu Bumi representative, you should look at all your planter options before making a final decision on what planter box design you order. Concrete or GRC (Glassfibre Reinforced Concrete) planter boxes are typically square, rectangular or cylindrical and come in a variety of heights, widths and depths. This flexibility enables them to be positioned together efficiently in a variety of different configurations to suit areas that require controlled vegetation such as balconies, roof tops, court yards and other open spaces. Nevertheless, the appearance of these planter boxes does not necessarily need to be square, rectangular or cylindrical with a flat plain grey concrete surface. There is nothing wrong with the standard grey concrete surface which has been a popular classic look for decades. However, GRC is such an adaptable medium for making planter boxes that it can also be used to produce attractive and practical variations to these typical standard shapes and finishes. Therefore, it may be worthwhile having a look at some of Satu Bumi custom GRC planter design options.
In addition, an often overlooked but important issue to consider in the design of planter boxes is how you intend to install them. The weight, size and shape of the planters are all issues that can impact installation. Therefore, your installation strategy should be included in the product design process for custom planters. Satu Bumi has worked with many business to create planters that not only look great, but are designed to facilitate installation on site.
Once you have a reasonable idea of what you are looking for in a custom GRC planter box, you can request the Satu Bumi Estimating Team to prepare a quotation. Satu Bumi’s estimating team places a lot of focus on working with its customer to assist them in the estimating and quotation process. For relatively simple requirements, pricing quotations can be turned around very quickly. However, on more complex projects the process often includes multiple discussions, preliminary shop drawings and a number of iterative cost estimations before a final quotation can be provided. Satu Bumi sees this as part of its solutions approach to customer service and is happy to work with its customers during this process at no charge to ensure they achieve a good result.
The professional preparation and management of shop drawings is an essential part of Satu Bumi’s quality control process for the development of custom GRC designs. Since the shop drawings for customer products will be followed in detail in the manufacturing process, it is important to ensure that all relevant issues are addressed before customer approval is provided. This is not a difficult process on most projects especially if most of the work has already been done during the estimating and quoting stages. However, larger or more complex projects may require a number of discussions/meetings and shop drawing iterations before a final design is ready for approval by the customer. And Satu Bumi has the right people to assist you through this process.

Price Verses Design Compromise

Off-the-shelf GRC products can provide a genuine value-for-money and quick delivery option for commercial landscaping projects that are primarily focused on price and delivery time. Satu Bumi provides this option for a significant selection of different shapes and sizes of GRC products including bowl planters, cylinder planters, rectangle planters, square planters, U planters and street furniture. However, in many cases this option may require considerable compromise on size, shape, texture, finish, robustness, plumbing and/or water proofing features. Therefore, for a relatively small increase in price, Satu Bumi can provide a custom-made GRC service that can provide exactly what a commercial project requires

The GRC Solutions Approach

Satu Bumi’s “Solutions Approach” enables its customers to avoid design compromises with little, if any, additional cost due to Satu Bumi’s unique solutions business model that provides the following key advantages for Satu Bumi’s customers: -

Pre-ordering assistance for product specifications and price quotations for both standard and bespoke GRC planter and street furniture sizes, shapes and finishes. This has proven to be a valuable free service that enables project architects and estimators to cost their projects as well as identify potential practical problems relating to the supply of GRC products for specific projects.

Product engineering services that can provide drawings, specifications and guidance on new bespoke GRC product designs and finishes. Satu Bumi has its own in-house Product Engineering Team that can tailor GRC planter and street furniture designs to meet the project-specific requirements of almost any landscaping project.

Access to a catalogue of GRC products that can be cost-effectively utilised on a project, with or without bespoke designs, to provide a homogeneous look and feel. Where compromise is acceptable or not required, the use of standard sized planters and/or street furniture for all or part of a project can assist in keeping project costs down and improving delivery times. Being able to match the design of standard sizes with bespoke designs on the same project can enable the best possible combination of cost minimisation and design harmony.

Direct relationship with the manufacturer that keeps the lines of communication and responsibility clean and eliminates the layers of cost associated with third party involvement.
Project management from the supply side on larger projects to work in conjunction with project managers to efficiently coordinate the delivery logistics for large numbers of planters/pots and street furniture.
Low transport costs using Australia wide capital city warehouse facilities and shipping container efficiencies. Therefore, our customers generally only pay for the transport of orders from their nearest state capital city seaport. This eliminates the excessive interstate transport costs generally associated with the manufacture of commercial-grade and/or custom GRC landscaping products in Australia.
More about Satu Bumi’s unique business model can be read on the ABOUT US page on this web site.

Custom GRC Examples

The following photos show examples of a varitey of different shaped custom built GRC planters from several Satu Bumi installations. Click images to expand.