A Christmas Tale

Pretoria Portland Cement Company Ltd (PPC), currently South Africa’s leading cement producer, recently contracted FLSmidth to replace a section of the existing kiln at their De Hoek plant in the Western Cape. FLSmidth originally supplied and installed the 4.35 dia x 66m Unax Kiln for PPC in 1973, together with some mills and auxiliary equipment. For the past couple of years, cracking was observed around the 11x onboard cooler ports, and a decision was made to replace the section at the cooler ports with a thicker 4m section.

The replacement Kiln section was manufactured at DCD Dorbyl near Johannesburg, and had to be transported by road 1600 km to the PPC cement plant in the Cape. The project was on a tight deadline and needed to be accelerated to ensure the kiln section met the site delivery deadline of beginning December 2009. This was to ensure the project could be completed during the end of year break. December is mid summer in South Africa, where traditionally industry closes and the public sector embarks on the annual summer holidays. The kiln section took three days to transport and arrived on site with one day to spare before the extremely stringent holiday road transport embargoes commenced, which would have delayed the project by a month.

Included in the scope of the contract was to repair the existing onboard coolers. Once these were removed, it was discovered 3 days before Christmas that the 36 year old cooler mounting brackets had to be scrapped due to metal fatigue, and were thus irreparable. To meet the original deadline, replacement brackets had to be manufactured and delivered to site during the period between Christmas & New Year.

Despite the unforeseen problems mentioned above, the project was successfully completed on schedule and within budget, much to the satisfaction of the client. Taking into consideration that temperatures in South Africa reach 45 Degrees Celsius in the shade in December, and the FLSmidth teams were working in shifts 24 hours per day adjacent to another operating kiln, the effort and sacrifice by the construction team is to be commended.

FLSmidth’s relationship with PPC dates back to the first supply of a mill in 1906, and after the success of the new FLS “Batsweledi” line at Dwaalboom in 2008, FLSmidth & PPC continue to enjoy a close working relationship based on respect and trust, no matter the size of the project.

For further information contact Ian Griffin.

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