A new R235-million wax flooding facility has started operations at the Volkswagen Group South Africa (VWSA) plant in Kariega, in the Eastern Cape.

The team responsible for implementing the project had to collaborate across four countries and over a period of two-and-a-half years, punctuated by Covid-19 restrictions, to establish the new facility.

The wax flooding facility promises to improve the efficiency and mitigate the environmental impact of the wax flooding process for locally built Volkswagen Polos and Polo Vivos.

This process, which serves to protect vehicles from corrosion in the cavities of the vehicle body, is now performed in a building covering 5 350 m² across four levels, located in the VWSA plant’s former electro-coating facility.

It is this same process that enables Volkswagen to sell vehicles with a 12-year anticorrosion warranty.

To establish the facility, employees across VWSA, Germany, Croatia and Czech Republic worked remotely from January 2020 to conceptualise the project using three-dimensional laser scans, models and virtual navigation in the design phase.

The international suppliers working on the project first visited the Kariega plant in July last year, when the manufacturing of components for the facility had already begun.

Now, a year later, the facility is operating across three shifts, matching the plant’s production volume of 680 vehicles a day.

It is, however, capable of meeting the demands of the VWSA plant’s full installed capacity of 710 vehicles a day. In fact, at its full capacity, the wax flooding facility will be able to process 747 vehicles a day.

The process of wax flooding follows after the body of a vehicle has been painted, as certain cavities in the body are inaccessible during the painting process.

First, the vehicle body is put on a hanger and heated to 60 ºC in a preheating oven, to prevent the wax from solidifying too quickly when it is injected.

Next, the body is lowered onto a wax flooding frame where wax (heated to 110 ºC) is injected and flooded into the cavities.

Finally, the vehicle is tipped at a 15º angle to allow excess wax to run off for reuse.

The wax used for the process is shipped from Germany in the form of tablets weighing 4.26 kg each, which are then melted down on site.

Using this new facility has allowed the VWSA plant to increase the volume of vehicles moving through the wax facility, while also reducing the environmental impact of the process.

The new facility uses 25% less energy for heating, and – as it uses liquefied petroleum gas – has reduced carbon dioxide emissions for the process by 55%.

“This investment from the Volkswagen group is a massive vote of confidence in VWSA as a production plant,” says VWSA production director Ulrich Schwabe.

“The modern facility will allow us to keep building and delivering high-quality Polos and Polo Vivos for local and export customers, while prioritising our commitment to continuously finding more environmentally responsible ways to do so.”