EMC Pacific (EMCP) is a privately owned company formed in 1996 to produce world class cycloaliphatic epoxy resin insulators, bushings and custom components for the electrical industry .  Today EMCP is Australasia's leading manufacturer of medium to high-voltage cycloaliphatic components and the company has established a wholly owned North American subsidiary EMC Pacific Holdings Ltd.  Our head office and manufacturing facilities are located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

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When the company first formed it had the advantage of being able to draw on the previous field experience of its sister facility EMC of the Republic of South Africa, which had been supplying outdoor epoxy resin insulators and bushings since 1982.  By 2000 EMCP had grown in its strengths and were producing all products and tooling in-house.

Cycloaliphatic epoxy resin technology (CEP) had been used successfully in outdoor insulator applications since the late 1960’s in Europe, the United States and Mexico, and was introduced to South Africa in the late 70’s.  Australia on the other hand is only in its infancy in adopting the CEP technology, with the first insulators being supplied by EMCP to the Far North Queensland Electricity Board (Ergon) in 1996. 

CEP insulators offer a higher dielectric strength, bending strength, tensile strength and impact strength than glazed porcelain, whilst also being much lighter.  Facilitating the acceptance of CEP insulators was to be the initial challenge for EMCP as the use of porcelain and glass had been standard practice ever since the start of reticulated power supply. This involved introducing Australian electrical utilities to something that was new to them, and working closely with them to gain their confidence and trust in the technology. 

Electrical utilities require insulators to have an extremely low failure rate, be low maintenance and have a long service life. Additionally Australian electrical utilities share common global challenges such as the looming shortage of timber, which has lead to the gradual introduction of steel and others for cross arm materials, resulting in a far greater performance criterion for insulators than ever before.

The popularity of EMCP’s insulators was at first based on their light weight, which can be more than 50 percent lighter than comparative ceramic products due to the much lower density of epoxy resin.  For stores and linesmen this was identified as reducing risk of OH&S issues, whilst also improving the ease of installation.  Additionally their impact durability proved to lower incidences of damage during and after installation.

Minor chips damaging the glaze of ceramic insulators can significantly affect their performance. Alternatively, CEP insulators demonstrated only minimal reduction in performance even after being targeted by projectiles.  CEP is also not a preferred part of a Cockatoo’s diet, which has been a unique Australian problem for composite insulators.  It seems this native bird is prone to gnawing away the sheds of composite insulators from the dead end all the way to just short of the live, significantly reducing the insulators performance.   EMCP’s epoxy resin insulators are now being installed in areas where this is known to be a problem.

Progressively through the last decade the major utilities have evaluated EMCP’s products, becoming familiar with the advantages they have to offer.  As a result EMCP has strong relationships with customers, have products installed in applications up to 66 kV throughout Australia and are now progressing into the New Zealand and North American markets.

A key contributor to EMCP’s success has been listening to industry feedback and being able to quickly respond to customers unique design requirements.  From 10 years experience in manufacture and supply for Australian applications, EMCP has gained considerable knowledge in the right choice of materials, correct manufacturing techniques and suitable designs for our very diverse and unique environments, different levels of pollution and climatic conditions.  This experience has both benefited our customers, with improvement in system reliability, and in turn fed back into Research and Development programs designed to further improve designs and performance of the products.

In recent years EMCP has continued to invest considerable resources to progress the development of a world first one-piece moulded medium-voltage crossarm insulator, of hydrophobic cycloaliphatic epoxy resin construction.  This will provide electrical utilities with a viable alternative to current cross arms, whilst offering significantly greater performance advantages than others.  This innovation will further ensure and expand EMCP’s supply to Australian and international utilities.

Through continuing to service the overhead distribution, substation, rail, transformer and switchgear sectors with world class Australian products, solutions and innovations, the team at EMCP is looking forward to sharing with their clients the challenges, developments and success of the next decade.  Solving our customers problems will always be our business.