African Fusion August 2015

SAIW Member profile: Hydra-Arc m

SA fabrication specialist looks Hydra-Arc, initially established in 1987 to source and supply welding and maintenance skills for Sasol shutdowns, has now established Sky-Hill Heavy Engineering, a facility for the fabrication of pressure vessels, heat exchangers, piping spools, structural steel and mechanical installations. African Fusion visits the facilities and talks to Riaan Kruger, quality manager; Ewan Huisamen, engineering manager; and Jacek Matyja, technical services manager about the group’s capabilities and its new position as a high quality and globally competitive fabricator.

for placement within the Group and on client sites for the duration of project or maintenance contracts. In 2002, realising the importance of skills for the future of the South African fabrication industry, Maciel established the Jose Maciel Welding Academy. This has evolved into the Mshiniwami Train- ing Academy, with the capacity to train up to 1 000 artisans every year. “This highly successful business, which feeds the needs of theHydra-Arc Group aswell as the country’s fabrication industry, is a vital component for economic growth,” Huisamen adds. Mshiniwami, which is situatedon the opposite side of the road to Hydra-Arc’s Sky-Hill facility, offers practical skills de- velopment in boilermaking, pipefitting, welding and grinding, with the more competent trainees having the opportu- nity to complete their trade tests and to become fully fledged qualified artisans.

services. As well as Jomele and Mshini- wami on the personnel side, the Group began to use its skills and other assets to offer direct maintenance services in the early 2000s. These services, which include the MEIP (mechanical, piping, electrical & instrumentation (subcon- tracted)) side of plant construction, are now offered under the Hydra-Arc name and extend from overall plant main- tenance shutdown management and turnaround services to the execution of specific vessel repair, piping replace- ment, mechanical overhauls, high- pressure cleaning (subcontracted) and routine plant, equipment servicing and new fabrication of pressure equipment. Regularmaintenance and refurbish- ment expertise includes: maintenance of gasifiers – jacket replacements, pressure vessel repair and the replace- ment of raw gas outlet nozzles; day to day and maintenance shutdown work on the oxygen plant, which consist of aluminium welding and stainless steel heat exchangers, pressure vessels and cooling boxes; continuous boiler main- tenance – structural, boiler tubing and

O riginally foundedby JoseMaciel in 1987 to source and supply artisans to the petrochemical industry in the Secunda area to satisfy the project and shutdown needs of local plants, Hydra-Arc has its roots in identi- fying and training skilled people fromall over the country. “We began by creating a database of locally skilled and quali- fied people for use during maintenance shutdowns,” says Huisamen. This work continues today, via Jomele Labour Hire and Placements, which recruits artisans Photographed outside of Sky-Hill’s Bay 4 are Jacek Matyja, technical services manager; Ewan Huisamen, engineering manager; and Riaan Kruger, quality manager.

Maintenance and shutdown expertise

Today, Hydra-Arc is a group of compa- ny’s that embrace its expanded suite of

Above and right: The manipulators for refurbishing ashlock vessels consist of rotators with a capacity of 50 t. An internal boom system is synchronised to deposit a spiral weld of equal thickness and heat input across the varying diameter of the conical vessel.

6

August 2015

AFRICAN FUSION