By DAVID CLOUSTON
Salina Journal
Valmont Industries, the second-largest metal galvanizing company in North America, has its eye on costs, which is why one of the largest galvanizing kettles of its kind no longer exists.
The bankrupt A-Plus Galvanizing company made a name for itself with its former kettle, which was 82 feet long, 10 feet wide and more than 12 feet deep -- nearly twice the size of typical zinc kettles.
The kettle that Valmont employs is smaller. But at 55 feet long, it's still big enough to hot-dip in a single pass any metal structure able to be transported aboard a flatbed semitrailer, said Richard Cornish, vice president and general manager of Valmont's coatings division.
Cornish and fellow Valmont executive Thomas Spears were on hand with local company representatives, government leaders and Salina Area Chamber of Commerce officials for a formal opening ceremony at the plant at lunchtime Thursday. Last year, Valmont paid $6.5 million for A-Plus's plant northeast of Ohio and Old U.S. Highway 40.
Spears is president of the division that includes coatings and that makes such items as lighting and traffic poles, communication towers and center-pivot irrigation equipment.
Shiny metal examples of the dip-galvanizer's craft were on display for visitors to view -- utility poles, a pull-trailer deck, material for a communications tower. They contrasted with the rust-colored stains on the building's metal exterior, which passersby on Ohio Street have grown accustomed to seeing.
"We're not sure quite what (A-Plus's owners) were doing operationally to cause that before. Over the next days, weeks and months, we'll clean the building back off," Cornish said. "It's airborne iron that accumulated there. I don't know why it did it like that."
Cornish and Spears deemed the building structurally well-built, particularly its "robust" concrete floor.
Smaller tank, less cost
In hot-dip galvanizing, molten zinc coats iron or steel. Exposed to the atmosphere, the dipped metal forms zinc carbonate, a material that protects the bare metal from corrosion by the elements.
A smaller dip tank takes less natural gas to heat the zinc to the optimum temperature of 835 degrees Fahrenheit, which is one way Valmont realizes cost savings, Cornish said.
"By identifying what was important to our customer base in the area -- while a large kettle was certainly nice to have, a 55-foot kettle with the same width and depth dimensions -- would serve the market just as well," he said.
The old kettle at one time was the largest in the world. The new kettle is designed to galvanize more product than any other kettle in the country.
"If you're able to efficiently product through the kettle in the least amount of time, and get it galvanized, that's where you're able to do it as cost effectively as possible," Cornish said.
The old kettle was cut up and sold partly as scrap.
"We're using part of it as processing and replacement parts at some of our other facilities," Cornish said. "We actually made a couple of tables out of it for doing servicing of really heavy stuff. Because that was 21รขÑ2-inch-thick steel."
Salina's good location
When needed, the company plans to shift some of the volume from its other galvanizing plants to Salina. The acquisition of the A-Plus plant marks the company's ninth U.S. galvanizing plant, and puts it within closer reach of its Midwestern customers, a key consideration given today's higher fuel and shipping costs, Cornish said.
The Salina plant, which restarted operations earlier this month, currently employs about 30 workers, he said. At its peak, Cornish hopes the plant will employ a larger work force, enabling it to operate three shifts, five days a week.
"That's where we can be the most profitable," he said.
Worldwide, the publicly traded company has about 50 locations on six continents. For the second quarter, Valmont earned $37.2 million; it projects a 20 percent growth in revenue for the full year 2008.
The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Omaha, Neb.
Worldwide, the company will galvanize an estimated 500 million pounds of metal this year, Cornish said.
Those are stout cranes
One other advantage of the Salina plant, he said, besides its location and its proximity to Interstate Highway 70, is its twin-lifting cranes, which together can handle pieces up to 50 tons for zinc dipping.
"At our other facilities we normally have cranes that can lift 15 to 20 tons," Cornish said.
Cornish said the fun and unique side of the business is figuring out on a daily basis how to galvanize some fairly unique metal pieces. Those include everything from portable communications towers used by the Army in places such as Afghanistan, to steps for Chicago's elevated train system.
"Everything's different. Everything's a challenge," he said.
n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.
©Salina Journal