MechChem Africa meets the directors and management team of Nordbak, South Africa’s leading manufacturer and applicator of synthetic co-polymer and epoxy-based compounds for applications such as crusher backing; mitigating against impact and abrasive wear, acid and severe corrosion resistance, and pulley lagging.
Nordbak’s Hi-Impact Pulley Compound was applied to KCM tail pulleys C5 and C4.
“The products we manufacture in our Wadeville factory in Germiston are used to protect liners and surfaces from wear and corrosion caused by impact, friction or chemical attack. We service the mining, petrochemical, minerals processing and transportation sectors, who rely on our products to protect and extend the lives of their heavy plant equipment such as crushers, conveyor pulleys, process vessels, tanks and slurry piping systems,” begins the company’s CEO, Mark Beyl.
With approximately 110 employees countrywide, the company’s head office is at its manufacturing plant in Germiston, and it has sales and support branches in Phalaborwa in the Limpopo Province and Kathu in the Northern Cape Province. “Some of our staff have been working at Nordbak for 39 years, which adds to Nordbak’s wealth of experience in developing solutions and delivering them to our clients,” he adds.
Founded in 1962 to distribute a limited range of imported products, in 1972 Nordbak began to manufacture polymer compounds under license. “Since our previous owner, Harry Gardiner, took over the management in the early nineteen nineties, Nordbak has been actively developing and applying co-polymer technology to its products. This has led to the current range of advanced solutions, which are uniquely tailored to different application needs on the African continent,” he continues.
“As a result, Nordbak, with the widest range of wear and abrasion resistant products, has become the market leader in South Africa. We have invested, and continue to invest, heavily in research and development to improve our existing compounds and to develop new solutions for the specific needs of customers across Africa,” Mark Beyl tells MechChem Africa.
Polymer technology involves the development of monomer-based liquid-resin compounds that, when mixed with a hardener, are transformed into solid and stable long-chain polymers. “In principle, our products work in the same way as two-part glues and putties that harden when mixed,” continues Deon Henning, Nordbak’s contracts director. “Co-polymers, though, consist of more than one polymer, which enables us to tune the key properties of our products to suit particular applications and environmental conditions.
“In terms of formulation expertise, we are probably about 20 years ahead of new local suppliers,” he continues. “You can get a functional baseline formulation relatively quickly but, over the years, we have discovered that what is necessary is a formulation that works consistently in the field – and it typically takes three years of R&D, tweaking, and onsite trials, to develop and fine tune each application-specific compound.
“We have found, for example, that ambient temperature when you apply the compound plays a major role; so we have special formulations and application tricks for use in different conditions. The compound also has to survive cold conditions during shipping, so we had to modify it to provide for that too. It is not only the strength, wear or corrosion resistance that we have to get right,” Henning explains.
Beyl adds that Nordbak is one of the only co-polymer manufacturing company in South Africa that produces linings that pass the smoke and toxicity tests for underground mining.
On the product side, Henning says that the company’s flagship product is its NORDBAK® Hi-Performance Backing for supporting metal wear plates in large gyratory and seven-foot cone crushers. “This product eliminates all the gaps between the shell on a crusher and its liners. Once the backing is secured behind the liner, the shock loads of impacting rock are absorbed by the backing and spread more evenly through to the casing. This prevents single point loading and associated localised damage,” he explains.
Nordbak® Hi-Performance Backing is designed to deliver excellent impact strength, resilience and high compression and tensile strength. It is non-flammable, needs no melting or special equipment to install, and has a high volumetric stability. “It really is world renowned!” adds Henning.
Anton Kaber, Nordbak’s sales director describes another product success in Zambia for the Konkola Copper Mine (KCM). “About a year ago, we received a progress report from KCM about tail pulleys C5 and C4 of the conveyors feeding the copper concentrator. A few months previously, we had lined these with a 12 mm coating of our Hi-Impact Pulley Compound, and after running them for 1 489 hours, they had done a calculation around the life advantages,” he explains.
In terms of production hours, they calculated the life expectancy of the Nordbak-lined pulley to be 13 693 hours, which is around 570 24-hour days. For comparative purposes, a rubber pulley had also been running for the same amount of time, but they calculated it wouldn’t last for even a third of that time. “Although the cost of our lining product was 45% more expensive, the cost savings that accrue due to three-times the life far outweigh the premium price paid. Our Nordbak pulley compound is a win-win for conveyor operators,” he says.
Kaber adds: “The Nordbak product we use for pulley liners surpasses all the requirements of SANS 1669 – including the flammability requirements for underground pulleys – and the application of the compound is also done according to that specification. As a result, we are very proud to have had the Sasol Synfuels and Sasol Mining contracts, to supply and apply this product to them, for over 14 years.”
Moving on to another application, Kaber shows a PowerPoint presentation of a Carbon-in-Leach (CIL) process tank for the gold industry, which was lined by Nordbak to prevent corrosion and metal degradation “With a pH of between 8.8 and 11 from the cyanide in the tank, the leach solutions are highly corrosive to the metal walls of the tank. Nordbak resolved the problem by lining the tank with several product layers.
A 6.0 mm layer of NORDWEAR 5 Acid was first trowelled onto the floor and sidewalls of the tank. This compound, together with resilience and impact strength, has excellent corrosion resistance and wear properties. “We then painted on our two-colour NORDCOAT 2 system, which has a blue coat underneath a black topcoat. This enables clients to do a visual inspection of the integrity of the surface coating every time the tank is drained. If the blue protrudes though the black, then the topcoat needs attention,” he explains, adding that these tanks were done approximately three years ago and have not had any issues since the Nordbak products were installed.
According to the customer, both products are easy to apply and their condition was still good. The NORDWEAR 5 Acid compound is now also being used in underflow chutes and launders, “with great success”.
Citing another case study, to protect a caustic bund wall area made of cement at a beverage plant, Kaber says Nordbak PS1 was used to give a very hard and smooth finish and to resist general acids and raised levels of chlorine. Here the customer cited the compound’s “outstanding wear and acid resistance properties” along with “ease of application” as the reasons for choosing it.
“These are a few examples to show that we are much more than just a liner backing company. We have specialised products for many different applications,” he adds.
Turning attention to the company’s future, Mark Beyl says the NordBak directors have taken the decision to make a R14-million investment in the company’s production facility over the next six to seven months. “We aim to increase production capacity by roughly 35% by expanding our factory and replanning and modernising the production lines.
“We are in a growing phase, having increased our turnover by roughly 40% over the past two years. For a long time now we have been a big-small company. With this investment we hope to transform Nordbak into a small-big company, instead,” Mark Beyl concludes.
