Unica Iron and Steel Building Materials Processes
Unica’s building materials processes are automated and comply with industry standards.
This is the reason we are regarded as a fast, efficient, tried and tested manufacturer of structural light steel – which is of course, a core component of building materials.
For building materials, scrap metals are usually carefully selected and in right proportion to ensure premium end products.
Once that is done, selected metals are subjected to a heat of 1700 degrees Celsius in a huge container called the “metal pot”. The molten steel is then transferred to the casting machine (CCM) in the billet forming plant. The molten metal then flows into the tundish before making its way to the funnel.
Here is where the billets begin to take shape:
After the molten passes through funnel holes, it creates billets which are then cut into desired size via a hot shear process.
The billets are subsequently transported by the roller beds onto the cooling beds.
After billets cool down, they are transported to the rolling plant for a second round of heating. During the reheating process, billets are subjected to heat of about 1200 degrees Celsius.
Once billets have gone through the reheating process, they are transported to the cooling beds once again where they get rolled into different sections and lengths (flat bar, square bar etc.)
Final products are then bundled in batches and transferred to the drive station where they are loaded onto trucks that make delivery to clients and distributors.
The quality of the scrap used is crucial to the secondary steel making process.
Qualified metallurgists constantly measure the chemistry in Unica’s state-of-the-art laboratory, using a Bruker Spectrometer. Each batch is marked using a unique number for traceability.
The resultant steel billets of up to 6m lengths are then processed in the rolling mills to produce light to medium steel sections.
Safety is the watchword at Unica Iron and Steel, with manufacturing procedures that places the safety of our staff as utmost priority. Safety officers ensure workers adhere strictly to safety rules at any particular point in time. With this, occupational hazards are reduced to the barest minimum.
Unica Iron and Steel is unique in its commitment to sustainable practices that protect the environment, a phenomenon which is not yet prevalent among other steel manufacturers.
It’s the reason why we operate with a standard pollution control system that mitigates the effects of the manufacturing process.
These ingots are then reheated and transformed into light structural sections namely:
- Mild steel square bars: available from 10 x 10mm to 16 x 16mm in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
- Mild steel window sections: available from L-FX7, LF7 EXTRA LIGHT, LF7 STANDARD, F4B STANDARD in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
- Mild steel Angle iron: available from 25 x 25 x 2m to 80 x 80 x 6m in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
- Mild steel Channels: available from 76 x 38 x 6 – 13m to 200 x 75 x 6 – 13m in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
- Mild steel I.P.E Sections: available from 76 x 45 x 4.8 – 7.2 m to 120 x 64 x 4.8 – 7.2m in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
- Mild steel Flat Bar: available from 25 x 4.5 x 6m to 40 x 4.5 x 6m in SANS 1431 300 WA (others on application)
