Bare steel in, galvanised steel out, three days later

Hot-dip galvanising · Wadeville, Germiston · since 1994

Dipped to SANS 121

Every load coated to SANS 121, which is ISO 1461 with a South African cover on it. Nothing leaves the yard under the mean thickness the standard sets for its section, and the certificate goes out with the steel rather than a week behind it.

Three working days

Steel booked in before 10h00 on a Monday is on the rack for collection by Wednesday afternoon. It goes longer only when the pickle is heavy with old paint or the job needs a second dip, and we phone you the day we see it.

We fetch and we return

Our own flat-deck runs Wadeville, Alrode, Isando, Nigel and Vereeniging twice a week at no charge above two tonnes. Anywhere else on the Reef we price the trip against the tonnage and put it on the same quote.

Measured in front of you

Five Elcometer readings off every batch, written on the ticket in pen with the checker's initials next to them. Ask Rushen to take them again while you stand there and he will, without making a face about it.

Tell us the mass and the longest dimension. We quote the same day.

Request a quote

From bare steel to spangle

Degrease, pickle, fluxCaustic bath, then hydrochloric acid at ambient, then a zinc ammonium chloride flux. Mill scale, rust and old paint come off here or the zinc will not take, which is why we ask what has been on the steel before.

Under at 450 degreesThe kettle sits at 450 °C. Steel goes under, the iron and the zinc alloy into one another layer by layer, and it comes up bonded to the section rather than painted onto it.

Stripped, chased, measuredRuns and lumps ground off on the bench, threads chased and gauged, then the thickness readings taken and written onto the job ticket before anything is bundled.

Racked and loadedBundled the way it arrived, marked with your job number, and either put on our deck for Thursday or left on the covered rack until you fetch it.

13,2 m

The kettle, inside length. Longer than that and the piece is double-dipped end for end, which we tell you when we quote and not when you collect.

8 t

The heaviest single piece the overhead crane will put on the jig. Above that you are looking at Vanderbijlpark, and we will give you the number.

85 µm

Typical coating on 6 mm plate against the 70 the standard asks for. On the Highveld that is somewhere near seventy years before anyone touches it again.

1 400 t

Steel through the bath last financial year across 2 610 loads. Most of it structural, and most of it off shops within thirty kilometres of this gate.

A zinc bath in Wadeville, since 1994

Spelter has been on Barlow Road since Willem Grobler and his brother bought a second-hand kettle off a works that was closing down in Isando and put it in a shed with a leaking roof. What happens in that kettle is not painting. Clean steel goes under molten zinc at 450 degrees and the two metals grow into one another, so the coating is part of the section rather than something sitting on top of it. Take a hammer to it and you take steel with it. The East Rand ended up the country's galvanising belt for the plainest of reasons. The fabrication shops are here, the mines that buy from them are up the road, and nobody wants to freight a nine-metre truss further than they have to. There are six kettles within twenty minutes of this gate and we are on speaking terms with most of them. Two shifts, Monday to Friday, and a half-day on Saturday when the racks are full. Willem's daughter Annelie runs the place now. He still comes in on Tuesdays to argue about the strength of the acid.

What we can dip

Kettle inside dimensions 13,2 m long, 1,8 m wide and 2,6 m deep. Single dip to 13,2 m, double dip end for end to 22 m.
Maximum single-piece mass 8 tonnes on the crane, and 12 tonnes across a full jig load.
Coating to SANS 121 (ISO 1461): mean 45 µm under 1,5 mm section, 55 µm to 3 mm, 70 µm to 6 mm and 85 µm above 6 mm.
Vent and drain holes stay your responsibility. If the drawing does not show them we phone before anything goes near the acid, because sealed hollow section comes apart in a kettle.
Grade 8.8 bolts, nuts and washers dipped and spun, nuts tapped oversize afterwards and supplied matched to the bolts they came in with.
Threads chased and gauged after dipping at no extra charge. Machined faces must be masked, so tell us where they are and we will mask them here.
We do not take cast iron under 6 mm, already-galvanised steel for a second coat without stripping it first, or anything with a closed cavity we cannot see into.
Duplex work, meaning galvanising then sweep-blast and powder coat, goes to a coater in Alrode we have used for eleven years. One quote, one delivery, one invoice.

Structural steel

Purlins, cleats, columns, portal frames and stair stringers for fabricators across Wadeville, Alrode and Benoni. Most of our tonnage, and the reason there is a second shift.

Mining and handling

Walkways, handrail, chute liners, screen frames and conveyor stringers heading for the platinum and chrome houses out past Rustenburg and Steelpoort.

Agriculture and water

Reservoir ladders, pump stands, cattle handling gear, trailer chassis and gate frames off the smallholdings between Nigel, Devon and Delmas.

Municipal and roadside

Guardrail, sign gantries, palisade, lamp columns and manhole frames for contractors working Ekurhuleni and provincial roads jobs.

What the shops on this side say

We send portal frames on a Monday and load out on Wednesday. In eleven years they have missed that twice, and both times somebody there phoned me before I phoned them.

Hennie Kruger · Kruger Staal, Alrode

They picked up that our drawing had no vent holes in the box section and stopped the job on the bank of the pickle. That saved us a very expensive hole in somebody's roof.

Sipho Radebe · Site foreman, Ekurhuleni roads

The thickness readings are written on the ticket in pen with the checker's initials next to them. Our client's engineer stopped asking for coating reports after the second load.

Marius van Zyl · Van Zyl Engineering, Nigel

Forty tonnes of handrail for a screen house over three weeks, and every bundle came back marked the way it went in. Nothing had to be sorted on site.

Lerato Mokoena · Project buyer, Steelpoort

Who runs the floor

Willem GroblerFounder

Bought the first kettle in 1994 and ran it himself for nine years. In on Tuesdays, mostly to test the acid strength and tell the newer men the pickle is too weak. He is usually right, which is the irritating part.

Annelie GroblerManaging member

Runs the works, the diary and the quoting. Twelve years in a fabrication estimating office before she came back here, which is why what you get is a fixed rand figure and not a rate per kilogram with conditions printed under it.

Thabo NkosiKettle foreman

Nineteen years on this floor, the last eight of them running the dip. Sets the immersion time and the withdrawal rate, and decides when a jig is loaded wrong. Nothing goes under until he has walked around it.

Rushen PillayQuality and dispatch

Takes the Elcometer readings, chases the threads, signs the ticket and loads the deck. If a batch comes up short on thickness it goes back to the kettle before you ever hear that it happened.

Tell us the mass and the longest dimension. We quote the same day.

Request a quote

Price and turnaround are quoted per job and per tonne, so send the mass and the longest dimension and you get a rand figure the same day. 14 Barlow Road, Wadeville, Germiston 1422 · 011 824 6370 · quotes@speltergalv.co.za Mon to Fri 07h00–17h00 · Sat 07h00–12h00