MechChem Africa March 2017

⎪ Products and industry news ⎪

Afrivalve’s new premises Afrivalve, the specialist sales division of the eDART Group, recently moved into new, improved and ex- panded premises. The continued growth in sales and extended range of valves supplied by Afrivalve made the move into larger premises a necessity. Gregor Hopton, group marketing manager for Afrivalve comments: “In the past 18months, Afrivalve has been engaged in more project work, which led us to look for premises that could accommodate our operations and stock holding. As we are now selling a greater number of large diameter knifegate valves (up to DN800), space became more of a priority, and we believe our new facilities in Kya Sands, Randburg, will fit our sales and manufacturing requirements.” “Our new premises will give us the ability to cen- tralise our sales team and to assemble the C-Tech Knifegate and RedRoc Pinch valves that are currently manufactured at eDART’s facility in Jet Park, east of Johannesburg. We are very excited about our expan- sion, as it means we can service and supply our clients evenmoresmoothlyandefficiently,”concludesHopton. Afrivalve was launched in 2015 in order to further expand the eDART rangeof products so that complete packages could be offered and thus newmarkets cap- tured. Afrivalve recently became the official distribu- tor of the Gemü Valve and Control Systems range for the mining and metal refining sector in Africa. www.afrivalve.co.za

Access specialist boosts workforce The increase in workers is a sure-fire indication of sus- tained growth at the rope-access specialist, Skyriders, which still derives 75% of its workload from the South African market.

“Themajority of our targets that we set for the busi- ness weremet and, in a few cases, exceeded. Our focus going forward in 2017 will be to consolidate what we achievedduring the latter stageof 2016,” says Skyriders marketing manager, Mike Zinn.

Electricity utility Eskomremains amajor client, with Skyriders enjoying an ongoing scope of work at both Medupi and Kusile Power Stations, as well as at the Ingula Pumped Storage Scheme. Another major source of repeat work has been various projects for Sasol. The big challenge for Skyriders in previous years has been the quiet winter months, during which time there is little opportunity to undertake any regular maintenance work at the power utility. This trend was finally broken in 2016, with an extremely busy winter for all Skyriders’ clients. “Newandoldclients areexperimentingwithour alternateaccess serviceoffering inorder to assistwith theirmaintenancebudgets, which arebeing stretched further as cost-cutting and lacklustre economic growth bites,” Zinn explains. Skyriders offers a variety of rope-access aided services to numerous industries, such as power generation, petrochemical, mining, heavy industry and facilities management. Current services include non-destructive testing (NDT) and inspec- tion, concrete inspection, maintenance and repairs, application of coating sys- tems, working-at-height safety systems, welding, and confined-space rescue and standby. www.ropeaccess.co.za Rapid rigging and derigging.