The Southern Africa Stainless Steel Develop-ment Association (Sassda) launched an online learning programme this month, targeted at nontechnical staff, such as administrative and warehousing staff, Sassda training manager Mankabe More tells Engineering News.

“This course is targeted at staff members who require only a basic understanding of stainless steel and do not normally have the opportunity to attend such courses, owing to travel expenses and time constraints,” she explains.

Sassda has retained its introductory one-day course, which offers a basic overview of stainless steel, but with a more technical perspective. It deals with subjects such as corrosion mechanisms and fabrications techniques, says More.

The basic introductory course is run three times a year in Johan- nesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Sassda also runs an advanced technical course, which is tar- geted at engineers and architects, once a year in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

“This was the first year that the introductory course in Johannesburg was held at Sassda’s offices, as we opened a training facility in August, which can cater for up to 20 people at a time,” she states, adding that widespread interest in the course meant Sassda had to turn people away, owing to space constraints.

More points out that Sassda has also developed training courses for specific industry sectors.

“Sassda has developed a specialised architectural course, which we offer to universities, architectural associations and private architectural firms. The architectural courses cover topics, such as finishes and forming and bending techniques,” she states.

More says the stainless steel architectural course is run at several universities in South Africa, including the Univer-sity of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwaters-rand, both in Gauteng; the Cape Peninsula University of Technol- ogy, in the Western Cape; and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, in the Eastern Cape.

Sassda is also partnering with universities, such as the University of Pretoria and UJ, to promote stainless steel knowledge in their metallurgical and engineering departments.

Additionally, Sassda is sponsoring the construction of a stainless steel microbrewery at UJ to introduce students to stainless steel to promote research work on various aspects of stainless steel in the food and beverage industry.

Dealing with Challenges

Sassda believes that many State-owned entities are unaware of the local industry’s stainless steel capabilities.

Therefore, to help address this lack of understanding, Sassda fabrication, welding and technical adviser John Tarboton has compiled a database of the larger local stainless steel fabricators, which is continuously growing. When projects are being planned, companies, government and State-owned entities can access this information through Sassda.

The database includes the companies’ areas of fabrication specialities, fabrication capacity and tonnage volume use.

2014 Seminar

Sassda is hosting seminars about the excellent combination of properties of duplex stainless steel and its range of applications, in February 2014, in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The association expects a total of about 350 people to attend these conferences.

Tarboton notes that duplex is the fastest-growing stainless steel material being consumed worldwide.

Further, he says stainless steel use, in general, is growing at about 6% a year, while duplex is growing at about 10% a year.

He explains that the growth rate of duplex is of a low base, as it only accounts for about 2% of all stainless steel produced.

“Duplex is twice as strong as other types of stainless steel and possesses a low nickel content, making it cheaper and also highly corrosion resistant,” states Tarboton, noting that the use of duplex enables fabricators to use thinner materials during fabrications and save on material costs.

The duplex conference is targeted at end-users and project/consulting engineering companies in the mining, petrochemicals, pulp and paper, agricultural, chemicals, energy and food and beverage industries, to support the increased adoption and growth of duplex stainless steels within both the South African and sub-Saharan African markets, adds Tarboton.