Crushing hammers, cane knives, washboards, shredders, trash plates and mill roll arcing are a few areas within a sugar mill that experience significant wear. In most cases, demand on throughput outweighs the need to do regular and ongoing maintenance.
It is vital to extract the most value out of each aspect and component of an operation to stay competitive in an increasingly difficult local and global market. A market leader in engineered wear protection, UK-headquartered Welding Alloys has more than 40 years of experience within the Southern African market.
Welding Alloys South Africa (WASA) works in partnership with sugar producers to reduce their operating cost through wear audits, market leading products, solutions and training. “Our focus is to reduce the cost of ownership through extended component life, reduced downtime and maintenance costs. With years of experience in the global sugar industry, Welding Alloys Group has tailor-made solutions and equipment to combat any wear problem within a sugar mill. We use specialised welding equipment and teams to do on-site refurbishment of worn components as well as a full fabrication workshop for turnkey projects,” explains the company.
The WASA product offering includes cored welding consumables (of which a large percentage is manufactured in South Africa) for hardfacing, stainless steel and cast iron, to name a few. Cored welding consumables have the advantage of a higher deposition rate to reduce downtime.
Also supplied are ceramic tiles and lining materials, specialised welding equipment and a range of chromium carbide welded overlay plate, which last between five to ten times longer than traditional quenched and tempered steels.