AFRICAN FUSION—MARCH2014
6
Genrec company profile
G
enrecwas first founded as Gen-
eral Erectionby theJoubert fam-
ily, who established workshops
in Wadeville to provide breakdown,
repair and fabrication services to the
mining industry.By1974, thecompany
had grown into a thriving fabrication
business that was large enough to list
on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
In the same year, Murray & Roberts
decided to diversify its operations and
acquired 30% of the Genrec shares,
From humble beginnings in 1953 in a small office in the
heart of the Free State gold fields of South Africa, Genrec,
now a subsidiary of Murray and Roberts, has grown into
one of the largest structural steel engineering companies
in Africa.
African Fusion
talks toMichael Mamotte, the
company’smarketing and new business development
manager.
SA’sworld class fabricator of
structural steel
before going on to acquire a controlling
share holding in 1988 and buying the
remaining equity in 1992.
Mamotte first joined the company
in 1989 and, apart from a two year
‘sabbatical’withanother structural steel
company, has spent his entire career
with the Genrec, first in quality assur-
ance and now in marketing. “I have
seen some impressive projects over
the years,” he recalls. “Hugedraglines,
pressurevessels, buildings like theBurj
al Arab in Dubai, mine headgear and
special projects such at the pot shells
for thealuminiumsmelting industry.We
have developed a niche for very heavy
structural steel work,minewinders and
headgear, for example, which other
fabricatorscouldnot do,”hecontinues.
In the company’s history, no-
table structural steel fabrications from
Genrec’s Wadeville facilities include:
11 000 t for the Burj al Arab hotel
in Dubai; 3 300 t for El Abra copper
mine in Chile; 2 795 t for the Khalifa
Sports Complex in Qatar; 9 800 t for
theAluminiumPot Steel project inMo-
zambique and 2 551 t for the Jacket
Mossgas project off the coast of South
Africa.
Most recently, Genrec was the
overall winner at the Southern African
Institute of Steel Construction (SAISC)
Steel Awards 2013, ‘for its excellence
in the use of structural steel for the
Medupi Power station’. Themain frame
supports for the Medupi boilers are
boxed steel columns of 2,1 m made
from plate of up to 40mm thick. The
base plates are 120 mm thick with a
massof7,5 t each.The individualmass
of the column sections, as delivered,
was up to 85 t.
Themajor boxedcolumnandbeam
components had to be fabricated to a
dimensional tolerance of 2,0 mm and
hadextensivediaphragmand stiffening
requirements,making itdifficult tomeet
the ‘squareness’ requirements. “The
submergedarcweldingworkon the long
seams was incredible,” saysMamotte.
“We had to do full penetration welds
and the project’s success came about
as a result of optimising the weld run
sequences to minimise distortion. Our
reject rate, once welding began, was
almost zero,” he reveals.
The boiler support girders, with a
mass of 94 t each, are 28,5 m long
and 6,1m deep. “These sit at 105m
on topof theboiler framestructuresand
eachconsistof110structural elements.
The boiler tubes all hang off these
girders to accommodate expansion,
so any failurewould have catastrophic
and very expensive consequences,”
Mamotteexplains, adding that “numer-
ous machined interfaces added to the
challenge of satisfying the dimensional
tolerances”.
The welding requirements were to
the highest standards especially for
the critical full penetration welds. But
the biggest challenge was satisfying
four independent sets of inspectors,
eachwith a different view of what was
visually acceptable. "In some cases,"
says Mamotte, "inspectors rejected
welds that had already been tested
and approved according to the AWS
D1.1 Code. Across the industry, we
have been grinding andpolishing good
welds, creating unnecessary costs and
delays.But through training, alongwith
the development of theGenrec inspec-
tion ‘app’ for mobile devices such as
iPads, the focus is now firmly back on
weld defects rather than inconsequen-
tial aesthetics,” Mamotte relates. The
inspection app makes the drawings
and inspection requirements available
to inspectors for any fabricatedcompo-
Michael Mamotte, Genrec’smarketing and
new business development manager.
11 000 t of the structural steelwork for the Burj Al Arab
hotel inDubai was fabricated in South Africa at Genrec’s
Wadeville facilities.
