May 10 2008
International steel producer Corus is to launch a new hot-dip zinc-based metallic coating with superior corrosion properties. Corus is the first mover in the European market.
In tests where corrosion behaviour has been accelerated, corrosion resistance showed to be at least four times as effective for the same coating thickness as products galvanized with zinc alone. The trade name for this state of the art product, manufactured at Corus in IJmuiden in the Netherlands, is MagiZinc®.
MagiZinc provides significant savings for customers in total costs for all applications that currently use thin hot-dip galvanised steel with a zinc coating of 275 g/m2. The great improvements in corrosion performance made possible with MagiZinc can be used in for example the construction industry. Applications are, amongst others, channels for ventilation systems and cable trays in large commercial and residential buildings. MagiZinc can also be applied in the automotive sector.
The new product MagiZinc consists predominantly of zinc, with additions of both magnesium and aluminium. Because of the better corrosion protection of MagiZinc as compared with conventional zinc coatings, this offers the opportunity to reduce the metallic coating weight while still improving the properties of the material. This makes thinner and lighter coating layers possible resulting in up to 4% more m2 per tonne material for the end customers. First aim will be to replace products with a 275 g/m2 zinc coating with a MagiZinc coating of 140 g/m2. Even thinner coating layers are under development.
After lab-scale and pilot line trials by Corus’ R&D department, Corus went on to optimise the coating in a number of production trials in cooperation with development partner Salzgitter AG. In conjunction with this, material application trials - including forming and joining - were carried out at selected customers with good results.
Posted May 9th,2008