Dorman Long Protective Coatings

Opening in Q3 2009, Dorman Long has installed the first heavy engineering quality large scale state of the art hot dip galvanising facility in Nigeria at its Agege site in Lagos. The resultant zinc coating from this plant ensures a protective coating for steel protecting it against atmospheric corrosion for up to 40 to 50 years depending on the environment.

It is one of the international industry’s larger plants with an annual capacity of in excess of 90,000mt per annum with a maximum work piece length of 13.5metres, width of 1.3metres and depth of 2.2 metres. These dimensions will be adequate for 99% of demand. In the event of an unusual lengths up to 19metres can be accommodated by the process of double dipping. This is all achieved with a galvanising kettle 14m long x 1.5m wide x 2.4m deep holding around 350 mT of molten zinc at any time 24/7.

In addition to the normal acid pickling the plant has a hot degreasing unit for use as required on particularly greasy steel. It also has a double station dryer after the fluxing stage which enables very even coatings thicknesses and surface finishes.

The plant was very much designed with the high specification requirements of the oil and gas industry in mind and will be able to process large fabrications to a very high standard, meeting all normal international certifications.

Because of its design the plant can also handle large quantities of smaller standard products such as gratings, communication and power transmission tower sections and Highway Guard Rails and a dedicated fully automated fabrication plant for the manufacture of such items is currently under construction located side by side with the galvanising facility.