Aussie safety showers in world's largest aluminium project

Enware Australia has made its largest export delivery to date, delivering more than 700 of its Australian designed and manufactured emergency safety showers along with associated safety equipment to the $US10.8 billion Ma’aden aluminium complex in Saudi Arabia.

The equipment was provided to Korean-based engineering company Hyundai for Ma‘aden’s joint venture with Alcoa, which from this year will become the largest and most vertically integrated aluminium complex in the world.

The Enware safety equipment will be used at diverse locations throughout the Ma’aden project, which will use Saudi Arabia’s bauxite resources to produce aluminium for domestic and international markets as well as to facilitate the development of domestic downstream industries in the Kingdom. Ma’aden envisages production at an annual mining rate of 4.0 million tons a year of bauxite.

Enware Australia Managing Director Adam Degnan said the supply of the custom-designed safety technology to Hyundai is a wonderful vote of confidence that could lead to further export opportunities for Enware, which is already the largest manufacturer of stainless steel safety showers in Australia and exports a range of products to 15 countries.

“Gaining recognition and accolades from a company such as Hyundai has already seen us receive an order from another company for identical safety systems for a similar refinery in the Middle East. We have also seen an increase in requests for tenders for overseas projects.

“However probably the most pleasing aspect is that Hyundai have contacted us with the possibility of involvement in two further projects under consideration in the Middle East,” said Degnan, whose company has won design awards in Australia and overseas for its specialist plumbing and stainless steel safety products.

Degnan said the project was enormously valuable to Enware because of the number of challenges the company successfully met in all areas of its operation, including manufacturing, administrative, engineering, logistics and R&D.

“Dealing efficiently and responsively with a company the size and scope of Hyundai in itself threw up many challenges in the transfer of information between us and the refinery operators via Hyundai. The project was very fluid in that there were a large number of design changes during manufacture which necessitated enormous flexibility on our part to ensure the systems still met required standards. The end result was specifically designed emergency systems for the project.

“The timeline of 15 months from the signing of the contract to final delivery was made even tougher as, during the process, the number of systems required increased several times, which in turn increased the pressure on component suppliers and our manufacturing facility to meet the deadline.

“With the numerous changes in design and quantities, our manufacturing plant was under considerable pressure and stress to adjust to these and to also maintain supply to existing customers. This caused us to investigate all avenues of production, leading to the introduction of a more streamlined manufacturing process and the management of our staff to ensure they were able to perform at an optimum level without any detriment to their health. These changes are now in place permanently and have led to better production all round, which is a great testament to our teamwork within the company as a whole.”

Within Enware itself this project had several advantageous spin-offs in a number of areas. Due to the number and variety of certifications, testing data and documentation required as part of the tendering and manufacturing process, the company now has an improved QA division with a wider knowledge of what is required at an international level.