In November 2009 Steven Vale started filming scrap metal giants for a DVD to be released in 2011. We continued filming recently as the guests of Thamesteel Ltd, a subsidiary of the Saudi Al-Tuwairiqi group of companies. Their site is in the grounds of the garrison town surrounding the historic Sheerness naval dockyard on the north Kent coast.
Thamesteel operates a 'mini' steel mill in which waste steels of various kinds are furnaced to produce new steel billets, bars and rods. Our main purpose was to record the MultiDockers handling the waste, but we found a great deal more of interest.
For a start there was the continuous flow of trucks bringing waste steel in. Some examples follow:
(Left) A DAF CF 85.410 operated by Van Dalen (UK) Ltd.
(Right) The arrival at the weighbridge was a Scania 124L 420.
There was a constant flow of Volvo FM 12s from Hargreaves (below) extruding their waste rather than tipping it.
Now, I don't think this (far left) is something you see every day: the truck being loaded by the Atlas is a Heathfield H33 from the 1970s. It is reckoned that only about 68 were ever built.
On the right is another Heathfield tipping.
As an Ipswich resident I always like to see the name Rapier at work. The Koehring-based NCK-Rapier 1405D crawler-mounted crane and excavator was drop-balling a 12-tonne steel ball to break up large steel agglomerates.
Bill Friday, Thamesteel's safety manager, showed us that there was plenty to see at this fascinating site. For two more posts see 18 July.
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