Belgium-based steel plate manufacturer NLMK Clabecq says its presence at bauma Africa is the perfect example of how a Southern African distributor, in this case South Africa-based steel distribution and processing company Duferco Distribution Services, can work hand in hand with a key foreign steel producer.

Duferco Distribution Services is the appointed distributor of NLMK Clabecq products in South Africa and both companies are keen to share the advantages of NLMK Clabecq’s new steel plates for the mining and construction industries, says NLMK Clabecq marketing manager Bernard Robins.

Visitors to the companies’ joint 50 m2 stand will view the two new steels that NLMK Clabecq is launching for the South African market, namely high-yield- strength Quend steel and abrasion-resistant Quard steel, he says, noting that the company “wants to show how easily these steel plates can be worked and transformed and specialists attending bauma Africa will see the cutting, bending and welding quality achievable with these steels”.

“In a country like South Africa, where mining is a key industry sector, Quard fulfils industry requirements for the hardness and lifetime requirements for all the machines working under extreme conditions. “In the construction sector, it is one of the main components of attachments and dumpers,” explains Robins.

He says Quend is mainly used in lifting applications, such as mobile cranes, and for truck chassis, owing to the steel’s high load capacity, adding that “many leading manufacturers in the mining and lifting sectors regularly use Quard and Quend and NLMK Clabecq is confident that these two steels will quickly become a reference in South Africa”.

Robins highlights that the bauma trade shows have provided a platform for showcasing Quard and Quend and the event has proved to be effective in promoting NLMK Clabecq’s steel at the bauma events in Munich, Germany, and in Shanghai, China.

“But there was no anchoring in Africa and when NLMK Clabecq heard that the bauma organisers would be exporting their concept to the African continent, there was no hesitation to book a stand,” he notes.

NLMK Clabecq hopes bauma Africa will increase its presence in Africa, but particularly in South Africa. With Quard and Quend, the company has two ranges of products that have been adopted by users on other continents and NLMK Clabecq expects the same positive uptake in Africa, particularly in the mining industry.

Duferco Distribution Services GM Russel Hockly says an event such as bauma Africa is important, as it enables the company to interact with end-users and manu- facturers and introduce its new and existing products to the market. “It is also important to see what competitors are offering the market to ensure that the com- pany remains competitive.”

Duferco Distribution Services is aiming to become a leader in the quenched and tempered steel industry and plans to expand into all the major areas of the South African industry, he notes, adding that the company wants to expand its geographical footprint in South Africa by opening up more branches and becoming a leading supplier to various mines in the country and a preferred supplier to other African countries.

Duferco Distribution Services is the appointed steel plate distribution arm of NLMK Clabecq, NLMK DanSteel and NLMK Verona in South Africa for grades S355JR, Quard (400, 450 and 500) and Quend (700 and 960) steels, and pressure vessel plates.

“The company provides material cut to size for most of these steels. Its services include high-definition plasma cutting, and computer numerically controlled (CNC) profile cutting, bending, rolling, drilling or chamfering. A skilled estimating and draughting department assists our customers in developing steel products using SigmaNEST, AutoCAD and CNC programming,” says Hockly.

Duferco Distribution Services is the South African subsidiary of Switzerland-based holding company Duferco Group, headquartered in Lugano, which is a leader in production and trading in the iron and steel industry. The group sells more than 20-million tons of steel and raw materials every year and has a staff complement of 12 000 people in 50 countries.

Duferco Group owns various steel mills, which produce about 2.879-million tons of steel a year, and has various distribution outlets across Europe, South America, North America and the Middle East.

In South Africa, Duferco Group also owns Saldanha-based rerolling facility Duferco Steel Processing, which produces 700 000 t/y of cold-rolled and galvanised steel for the export and local market, as well as vanadium producer Vanchem, which is one of the top five vanadium producers in the world, with assets comprising various vanadium oxide, ferrovanadium and vanadium chemicals production facilities.

Duferco Group is also involved in various diversification ventures, ranging from owning and operating vessels to the sale of electricity, natural gas and photo- voltaic power plants across Europe and real estate developments.

NLMK Clabecq is a subsidiary of NLMK Group. The NLMK Clabecq factory, in Belgium, produces medium and heavy steel plates ranging from 3 mm to 120 mm in thickness. The company mainly specialises in high-added-value products, such as abrasion-resistant steels, high-yield-strength steels and pressure vessel steels.

NLMK Clabecq uses a produc- tion facility with a combination of reversible quarto line, a four-stand continuous finishing line and a new fast-cooling system. The cooling system, Robins explains, is ideally positioned at the end of the line and allows for superior mechanical characteristics to be obtained. “This industrial facility reliably produces low-thickness steel plates, with top-class surface aspect and flatness, he says.