The term ‘gabion’ refers to a modular containment system that enables rock, stone and nondegradable inert materials to be used as a construction material.

The modules, units or ‘cages’ as they are known, are formed from wire mesh fabric panels, jointed to form square, rectangular or trapezoidal shaped units.

These units are part pre-assembled in the factory to form a flat-pack system.
These flat-pack units are supplied to the customer and formed into the final shaped module on site with the necessary lacing wire, helicals and/or ‘C’ rings as required. Each module has to be connected to adjacent modules to form a monolithic structure.

The types of mesh used must be of a non-ravelling type such as welded wire mesh or hexagonal woven wire mesh and provided with corrosion protection to suit the required exposure conditions.

The gabions are normally machine-filled in layers with the contractor picking the stone over by hand to reduce excessive voids. The exposed faces can be hand-placed to provide an appearance of a dry stone wall.

Although some structures are only machine-filled, this procedure is not normally recommended as it may give rise to a high void content which can result in deformation. For gabion structures to perform correctly, the quality of installation is of paramount importance.