African Fusion talks to Kagisho Bapela, executive for strategy, mergers and acquisitions for the Two Roads Group (2Roads); and Ross Tudhope, managing director of Applied Welding Technology (AWT) about the excellent fit between their repair capabilities for industrial plant dependent on process flow technologies.
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“Two Roads is a Group of engineering companies with a common focus on process flow applications,” begins Kagisho Bapela of the 2Roads Group. “We have built our services around valves and we own Paltech, a proudly South African, 100% black-owned valves and pumps manufacturer, supplier and service company,” he begins.
2Roads companies include:
- Integrity NDT Projects, a specialist non-destructive testing company specialising in various types of conventional and advanced NDT methods and post-weld heat treatment.
- PSC Integrity, a Type A inspection authority for both manufacturing and in-service inspections.
- NDT Projects, a company that provides NDT and heat treatment services as well as corrosion protection solutions, including pickling and passivation services.
- Groupline Projects, which develops lining solutions for a variety of materials handling, flow and wear problems.
- Paltech, the Group’s manufacturer of custom-designed valve solutions and horizontal and vertical centrifugal pumps.
- “We do pressure testing of pressure vessels; inspection and corrosion protection of pipelines as well as for seaside process plants in countries such as West Africa; and we offer valve and pump solutions across industrial sectors, from mining and power generation to water infrastructure, petrochemical, food and beverage plants, along with associated engineering services for all types of process flow circuits,” he tells African Fusion.
“Two Roads’ ultimate goal is to offer integrated services along the process flow value chain, whether in mining, power generation, water infrastructure or any industry where steam, water, slurries, fuels or gases need to be moved, managed and controlled,” he adds.
“As part of our maintenance services, it became important to expand our offering to include advanced weld repair, which made the partnership with Applied Welding Technology a natural extension to our integrated 2Roads offering,” he continues, referring to the recent acquisition by 2Roads of a 51% stake in Applied Welding (AWT) on January 13, 2022.
Highlighting one example of the synergy between 2Roads Group companies and AWT, Bapela notes that companies within the 2Roads Group hold contracts at various Eskom and other power stations – Grootvlei, Kusile, Hendrina, Arnot and Lethabo, which involve applying its full suite of Inspection and NDT offerings to identify the condition and maintenance needs of the boilers, piping and associated critical equipment such as high pressure steam valves and feed pumps. “Integrity NDT Projects applies NDT techniques – such as conventional and computerised radiography, phased-array UT, conventional UT, MT, PT and many other methods – to equipment, from high pressure, high temperature valves to pipe work, assisting engineers to create the repair scope of work necessary to keep these power stations running reliably,” he notes.
“Aggregated specialist repair services from 2Roads Group companies create additional opportunities to implement repairs and deliver a holistic suite of services to these power stations,” he points out.
Applied Welding: a perfect fit
“AWT fits very well into the broader 2Roads offering. We have always done a lot of repair work on valves and pumps, mostly on Eskom units. 2Roads’ inspection services are particularly interesting to us because we have developed some advanced weld repair procedures for some of the more critical valves used,” continues Ross Tudhope, MD of AWT.
While 2Roads can deliver a full repair and maintenance service on its Paltech valves, Tudhope says AWT has long offered multi-brand valve repair services. Most notable, he says Applied Welding has recently developed an advanced procedure to do in situ repairs of large steam valve seats. “Critical-welded high pressure valves that require repair on a generation unit can take a long time to remove and replace. Instead of having to remove the entire valve and replace it with a new or reconditioned one, we have developed an automated process of replacing valve seats without having to remove or dismantle the entire valve.
“We replace the seats with ones we have reconditioned and machined to specification in our factory in Spartan. Most high pressure high temperature gate valves seats are sealed by welding the seats into place, which involves welding in some very difficult to see and reach places. We have developed a purpose-built system that can replace these valve seats in situ using special jigs and welding heads. At the moment, we can accommodate parallel slide valves and non-return valves in sizes from 200 mm and up,” explains Tudhope.
“This enables these high value steam valves to be repaired in a fraction of the time that it would take to cut that valve out of the pipework and repair it off-site. This offers huge economic advantages to power station operators,” he adds.
With respect to the repair of the seats for these valves, he says these are typically clad with exotic materials such as Stellite. “These materials are often difficult to weld and machine, so we refurbish the seats in our 3 500 m2 factory in Spartan, Kempton Park.
“Since we are working extensively with SOEs, 2Roads’ Level 1 B-BBEE status is invaluable to us in terms of ongoing access to this work. We also see this merger as an opportunity to expand our offering to different SOEs based on the expertise we have been developed over the years,” Tudhope informs African Fusion.
The AWT factory, he says, offers a wide range of both welding and machining capabilities. “We prefer to combine these two offerings by doing work that involves weld repair followed by precise machining back to OEM specifications. We are specialists at restoring the critical components of machines back to their as-new condition,” he notes.
“At the moment, for example, we do new manufacture on boiler feed pumps for major power stations, which involves very thick section welding of up to 70 mm tube thicknesses of multistage barrels. The welding has to test 100% flaw-free using phased-array UT and we do the work using a combination of mechanised MIG welding and manual metal arc welding (MMAW).
In terms of materials, some barrels are clad internally with a layer of 316L stainless steel using a rotator and a column and boom system. “AWT has long been a specialist welder of a variety of high alloy and exotic materials. In one particular pump barrel, some nozzles are WB36, a Ni-Cu-Mo steel micro-alloyed with niobium, others are cast 316L and yet more components are made from 10CrMo910. Coupled with the internal cladding and final PWHT, this has been a real welding engineers’ challenge!” he exclaims
Many high temperature valve parts require the use of the creep resistant 2¼Cr1Mo and CrMoV steels, while yet other valve parts use materials that are barely weldable, such as spindles made from X19CrMoVNb11-1, a high chromium martensitic boiler steel that is very sensitive to welding,” Tudhope reveals. “Weld repair also offer the chance to improve the surface properties of the base material.”
Kagisho Bapela elaborates: “It is often quicker and much more cost effective to use a locally engineered procedure to repair process plant equipment than to procure and install new replacement components. Procurement processes can be long, both in terms of getting the capital expense authorised and then waiting for the delivery from an OEM – and if downtime is involved, this can be very costly. Repair services can usually be justified from operational budgets, so spending authorisation delays are also shorter,” he points out.
“Going forward, we are looking to create capacity in an allied suite of services to keep process plants running with fewer interruptions, being on constant standby to help customers keep their infrastructure healthy. SOEs are all facing having to rebuild their infrastructure: from power to transport to water, everyone seems to be short of the engineering capacity needed to restore service delivery levels.
He reveals that the 2Roads Group will also be establishing a fully-fledged training centre that will offer management, vocational and skills development training. “This will include training and skills transfer programmes based on access to practical training on welding techniques used by AWT,” says Bapela.
“Through this partnership with 2Roads, we see huge opportunities to access markets where we have not previously been active,” Tudhope concludes.
www.2roads.co.za: www.appliedwelding.co.za
