Part of TCI Group · UK design, UK manufacturing capability, since 2019
Hand-made and cast silicone moulds, formliners and pattern tooling for precast concrete, GRC, cast stone, plaster, resin and architectural restoration. Specified around your mix and your strike sequence rather than around a catalogue texture.
Who we are
TCI Construction makes silicone concrete moulds, formliners, GRC moulds and architectural restoration moulds. We are the concrete and architectural casting division of TCI Group, working out of our own unit in Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, near Stratford-upon-Avon.
Most enquiries arrive as a problem rather than a purchase order. A liner that has gone tacky and is pulling the face off the concrete. A deep-relief panel that will not release from a rigid mould at all. A weathered corbel that has to be replaced without taking the original off the building. A repeat order where unit nine no longer matches unit one. Every one of those is a specification question about cure system, hardness, backing plus release. All of them are cheaper to answer before the tooling is cut.
So we start at the cast unit and work backwards. What is the mix. How is it compacted. How is it cured. How does the panel come off the bed, who strikes it, and how many do you need before the tool is finished. Only then do we choose the mould material and the moulding route.
If you want the technical version first, read how each moulding route works on concrete or the guide to silicone and polyurethane mould materials for concrete.
How TCI Construction worksFour kinds of concrete mould
One moulding capability. Four different sets of requirements, and a different hardness, backing plus release conversation behind each of them.
Flexible formliners that cast a face into the panel: split stone, riven slate, board-marked timber, brick, ashlar, custom relief, architect artwork. The liner flexes off the set panel, which is what makes deep relief possible where a rigid mould could never release.
Moulds for cladding panels, copings, cills, lintels, bollards, planters, drainage furniture and one-off architectural units. Repeatability across the run is the whole job, so hardness and backing get specified around handling rather than around the bench.
Moulds for glassfibre-reinforced concrete facade units: cornices, columns, canopies. The silicone face is only half of it. Hand-lay and spray-up need a rigid frame behind the face or the shell distorts as it is worked.
Moulding straight off a weathered original so the replacement matches, taken in situ wherever the carving can stay on the building. Soft high-elongation silicone flexes out of undercut that no rigid mould would clear.
Key benefits
Rigid moulds make you simplify the unit until it will release. A flexible face lets you cast what the architect actually drew, and it usually cuts the labour between striking and a saleable panel.
Silicone often needs no chemical release from concrete at all, which is the whole point of it over GRP. Fewer sprayed agents means less surface contamination and fewer blemishes to make good. It also ends the argument over where a stain came from, the mould or the mix.
Because a liner can be flexed off a set panel, the draft angle a rigid mould would demand is not required. Split-stone texture, deep board marking, carved relief. All of it comes off cleanly instead of being shallowed out to suit the tool.
A platinum-cure face holds fine texture and stays dimensionally stable over many casts, so the panels at the end of a facade read the same as the panels at the start.
Reject panels, patching and hand-finishing cost far more across a run than the tooling does. We will tell you when the cheaper liner is a false economy.
Five moulding routes
Everything we sell is moulded. Five routes cover it, and for concrete work the first two do most of the heavy lifting: hand-made moulds brushed straight onto a pattern or onto a building, and cast moulds poured face-down onto a pattern plate. The other three sit behind moulded components.
The pattern itself is printed, machined or hand made, and backing frames are cut and welded here too. None of that is what you buy. It is how the mould gets made, and it is set out in full on hand-made, cast plus vacuum cast mould making.
Where the moulds end up
Textured and patterned face tooling for cladding, spandrel, feature panels. Artwork arrives as a hand sketch, an elevation or a 3D file, and we work from any of them.
Rubber moulds for concrete kerbs and paving, plus bollards, planters, drainage furniture and fencing tooling. Genuinely public work the group has delivered, where every unit has to match the last one laid.
Tooling for roofing tile production and moulded rubber components, where abrasion and cycle time matter more than fine detail. Volume runs can move across to TCI Products, our volume silicone and rubber moulding division.
How we work
We start with the cast unit: mix, compaction, curing, release regime, panel size, run length and how it is struck. Anything that will fight the tooling gets flagged before a pattern is cut.
We work from your CAD, a drawing, a sample panel, the physical original or a 3D scan. Relief depth, draft, joint lines, backing and pull direction get resolved with you first.
The pattern is resin printed, CNC machined or hand made. For restoration work the original itself is usually the pattern, moulded in situ where it can stay in place.
The face is hand-laid or cast in the agreed material and the rigid backing is built to suit it, which is what stops the panel bowing under the pour.
We patch-test against your mix and your release agent rather than assume release. We keep the pattern, so a replacement liner in two years matches the first one.
UK design and UK manufacturing capability
We talk about cost per cast, reject panels and how the liner will be stored between pours rather than price per square metre. That is where a precast programme actually loses money.
Design, tool design, pattern making, mould making and inspection all happen at Waterloo Park in Bidford-on-Avon, alongside TCI Mouldings, TCI Culinary and TCI Products. On some larger programmes we place part of the production with partner factories, and who we are and where the work happens explains that in full.
What actually wears out a concrete mould
How long your tooling lasts is decided by the yard rather than by the invoice. The mechanisms are set out on silicone and polyurethane mould materials for concrete.
Always committed
Every mould we manufacture carries a written warranty against manufacturing defect. Material, hardness, backing plus joint detail are all recorded against your order.
Drawings, artwork, patterns stay yours. We work under non-disclosure by default and your pattern is never run for another customer.
One technical contact from first enquiry through to repeat supply. Someone who knows your mix, your release regime and how your mould was backed, instead of a shared inbox.
Every job is drawn, specified and engineered at our own facility in Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. We hold the moulding capability here too: hand-made, cast, vacuum cast, compression and injection, with tool making, inspection and finishing in the same building. On some programmes we place part of the production with partners we have used for years. We will tell you which route your job is taking before you order, and how that works is set out on our About page.
Job size
We are set up for long production programmes with a repeat schedule, and we quote them properly: tool cost, unit cost and what happens when the tool wears. That is the work that keeps a workshop like ours stable.
One-off tooling and short runs are quoted the same week where we can. There is no minimum order value and no enquiry we treat as too small to answer.
Multi-year, scheduled volume with call-off quantities, held stock and a maintained tool. Tell us the annual number and we will price the tool against it.
We take on other people's tooling. We will inspect it, tell you honestly what life is left in it, and either run it or replace it.
Awkward geometry, one deep undercut, a part with no drawing. These are the jobs we tend to get because somebody else said no.
Companies we have worked with
These are companies TCI Group has worked with since 2019. We are a small workshop that a number of large manufacturers keep coming back to, which is the only credential we would ask you to weigh.
Main contractors, civil engineering firms and facade manufacturers. Concrete work is unforgiving about tooling, and these are the people who tell you so.
Between them these are own-label suppliers to every major UK supermarket, so a good deal of our food tooling ends up making something you can buy on a Tuesday.
Candle and home fragrance is a large part of what we mould. That runs from single-room chandlers ordering one mould through to manufacturers running scheduled volume.
Frequently asked
Usually far less than you are used to, and often none at all. Silicone releases concrete mechanically rather than chemically, which is the main reason precast yards move to it from GRP or timber. Where an agent is used, for turnaround or because the mix is sticky, it has to be compatible. A petroleum-based or chemically reactive agent will swell the liner face and shorten its life badly. Tell us what you spray now and we will say whether to keep it.
It depends on the mix, the release regime, how the panel is struck and on the backing behind the face, so we confirm an expected life against your specification instead of quoting a headline number. Cast count on its own is a poor guide anyway. What wears tooling out is alkaline attack from the cement, abrasion from the aggregate, table vibration and the heat of accelerated curing, all working on the face at once. A liner kept on a covered bed and a liner dragged across a yard are not the same product after a season.
Yes. It is a large part of the architectural restoration moulds we make. Where the original can stay in place we mould it in situ, so it never leaves the building. Where it can safely come off, we mould it on the bench. Weathered stone is friable, so consolidation and a patch test come first. We can also rebuild detail that has eroded away from a scan before a replacement pattern is cut, so the new unit reads as the original did rather than as the original does now.
Silicone releases better, holds fine texture and copes with deep undercut, which is why it dominates textured facade work and heritage moulding. Polyurethane is tougher against abrasion and cheaper per litre, so it earns its place on flat high-wear repeat production where the face is not delicate. Plenty of jobs use both: a silicone face for the texture over a polyurethane or resin backing for the structure.
Deep-relief liners and GRC moulds almost always do. Silicone is a face material. Without plywood, a welded steel frame or a resin and glassfibre backer, the panel bows under the pour and the geometry drifts across a run. We design the backing at the same time as the face. Retro-fitting stiffness to a liner that has already moved does not work.
Usually. Send the old liner, or a cast taken off it, and we can identify the material family, an approximate hardness and how it was backed. Then we rebuild the pattern. Legacy concrete tooling is often specified softer than the job needs. That reads as generosity on the bench and behaves as early distortion in the yard.
One group, four specialisms
Shared engineering, shared workshop, separate specialisms. The release knowledge behind a chocolate tray is available to a precast yard as well.
Photographed at Waterloo Park
Three photographs taken at the TCI Group unit in Bidford-on-Avon. Elsewhere on the site, where we did not have a photograph of a process or a finished elevation, the picture is illustrative, and the about page names which is which.
Ready to start?
Send a drawing, an elevation, a photograph of the original or a sample panel. You will get a moulding route, a material recommendation and a price rather than a brochure.
