Joseph Ash achieves ISO14001 certification

Great news! Joseph Ash Galvanizing has been awarded ISO14001, the international standard for designing and implementing an environmental management system.

The award has been granted to Head Office, as well as five of the plants: Joseph Ash Bilston, Joseph Ash Bridgend, Joseph Ash Chesterfield, Joseph Ash Telford, and Joseph Ash Walsall.

An environmental management system, often called an EMS, comprises the policies, processes, plans, practices, and records that define the rules governing how a company interacts with the environment.

Preventing companies from causing negative impacts on the environment are two of the most critical challenges facing businesses today. Achieving the ISO14001 standard shows we’re amongst the world’s businesses that care enough about the background to reduce our environmental footprint.

Congratulations to all our team members for achieving this latest standard!

Michael Worth, Head of Technical and ESG at Joseph Ash Galvanizing said “Everyone should be incredibly proud of their contributions to this achievement. This clearly demonstrates that our approach to managing our environmental impacts and our strategy to maximise environmental opportunities are on the right trajectory to delivering continual improvement in this area.”

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See some of the steps we take to minimise our impact on the environment in our Green Future plan.

The Jubilee Bank Holidays will soon be upon us, which means our plants will be closed.

If you have projects that need completing around this time, book the work in early so that we can complete it for you.

All Premier Galvanizing and Joseph Ash Galvanizing plants will be closed on Thursday 2 June and Friday 3 June 2022.

Enjoy your Bank Holidays too!

Intergalva takes place in Rome next month, and team members from Joseph Ash Galvanizing and Premier Galvanizing will be attending.

Intergalva is known as ‘the worldwide galvanizing industry’s meeting place’ and we’re looking forward to seeing some of our colleagues from global galvanizing plants, meeting some of our clients and who may attend, and learning about latest industry developments.

A key theme for this year’s Intergalva is energy supply and the future decarbonisation of galvanizing operations.

The event is hosted by the EGGA (European General Galvanizers Association).

Registration is still open if you’d like to attend.

Hot dip galvanized trailer chassis post-passivation

When using steel in construction, hot dip galvanizing is an essential part of the project to protect the longevity of the metal. You carefully design your steel to fit the overall build of the construction project. But sufficient care and attention are also required when you design your steel for galvanization. If you design right for galvanizing you’ll prevent any processing problems at the galvanizing plant and will also ensure you get the best steel coating possible.

Here’s some key design pointers to enable your steelwork to be processed safely whilst giving you the best quality coating.

When sending steel to a galvanizing plant, you will have several goals in mind:

Fast turnaround
Premium quality coating
Excellent service
Good value for money.

Ensuring steelwork is suitably designed for hot dip galvanizing helps achieve these goals and ensures the steel is safe to be galvanized. Poor design can result in poor coating quality, additional costs, low production rates, and failure to meet delivery dates. Poor design can also pose serious health and safety risks for the people carrying out the galvanizing.

What does good design look like?

The importance of venting and drainage

When steel is immersed in the galvanizing bath, add vent and drain holes to sealed hollow sections or cavities to ensure superheated air can escape all internal spaces and the molten zinc can flow freely over all surfaces, external and internal. Failure to adequately vent would result in trapped air causing an explosion and endangering galvanizing workers. It would also cause zinc build-up where the excess zinc cannot drain properly.

The sizing and location of vent holes are just as important as the provision of these holes. As a guide, make the venting holes as large as the steelwork can manage (but talk to your galvanizer for the best advice for your fabrications). The hole locations will be determined by how the steelwork is hung on the jigs at the galvanizing plant.

When adequately sized and correctly located, vent and drainage holes will:

Significantly reduce the risk of injury to galvanizers.
Allow faster immersion and withdrawal speeds which will help to minimise excessive coating build-up and reduce the risk of distortion by minimising temperature differentials.
Virtually eliminate the risk of damage to product, plant and equipment caused by the explosive vaporisation of entrapped moisture or air.
Improve the characteristics of the galvanized coating by restricting the effects of zinc solidification during drainage and reducing the mass of zinc required to achieve a good finish.

Size, weight, and shape matter

To ensure a good hot dip galvanizing finish, size, weight, and shape really do matter. A fabrication design should ideally incorporate easily handled components or fabrications which can be single dipped or subsequently assembled by bolting with galvanized fastenings. Double dipping is a possible alternative. Seek advice from your galvanizer before proceeding.

Suspension holes or lifting lugs may be needed if there are no suitable points for locating hooks or wires. Once again, lifting points should be positioned to maximise venting and drainage.

Minimising distortion

You will not want your steelwork to become distorted during the galvanizing process. To minimise distortion, fabrications should ideally be symmetrical, suitable for single dipping, and incorporate sections of as near equal thickness as possible at the joints. Components should also fit perfectly to avoid force or restraint during joining. Use continuously welded joints with balanced welding techniques to reduce uneven thermal stresses and the largest possible radii on all curved members.

Choose your galvanizer wisely

As well as following the rules of good design for pre-galvanized steel, take care when choosing your galvanizer.

Health and safety standards

Look for a plant with exemplary health and safety standards. One where the plant managers work hard to keep all colleagues and visitors safe with up-to-date equipment, sufficient PPE, good air quality, and clear-to-follow rigorous shop floor processes. And one where team members work safely on every job by thoroughly inspecting steel from the point it is delivered and at key intervals of the galvanizing process to ensure projects will not pose health and safety risks.

Training

Look for a galvanizer that not only trains team members on all aspects of safety in galvanizing, but also teaches clients and the wider industry. At Joseph Ash Galvanizing for example, we issue ‘Safe Design for Hot Dip Galvanizing’ posters to our clients as reference guides for steel preparation. We’ve also published a ‘Design for Galvanizing’ video (available on our website and YouTube), and we run ‘Design for Galvanizing’ seminars onsite for client teams.

Technical help

A final piece of advice is to always look for a galvanizing company happy to be on hand to provide technical advice on all aspects of pre-galvanized steel preparation.

Joseph Ash Galvanizing has a Technical Support Team who will answer any steel fabrication questions from clients. The team members are also happy to visit fabrication shops and advise on venting requirements to ensure fabrication issues can be resolved before the steel reaches the galvanizing plant.

We hope you’ve found these pointers helpful. For more information, please get in touch with a member of our team. There is also lots of helpful information freely provided by the Galvanizers Association.

As the country gets ready for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, there’s a sense of excitement in the air. The Post Office has issued commemorative stamps. Big business is talking about Jubilee activities. The BBC is full of royal news, and local communities are getting out the bunting and flags.

The village of Draycott in Derbyshire is no exception.

Every year, the Draycott Village Fund promotes ‘Draycott in Bloom’, encouraging residents to fill the village with flowers to brighten up the surroundings.

Draycott has been so successful that it has won four RHS Gold Awards for the annual ‘Britain in Bloom’ competition in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

In 2022 they are going all-out to win again, and they’re using the Platinum Jubilee as the key theme.

Residents will be choosing flowers with colours suitable to commemorate the Jubilee. They’ve also gone a step further and fabricated a 10ft high by 6ft wide steel structure weighing 200kg for Draycott Square.

The structure is dome-shaped and topped with a crown, and it was commissioned by two Draycott retirees who like to do good projects for the community.

Joseph Ash Chesterfield hot dip galvanized it.

Hot dip galvanizing provides long-life, low-maintenance corrosion protection, which safeguards the steel from atmospheric attack, which causes rust. It also gives steelwork and shiny silver colour.

It was a pleasure to be involved in this community project. It’s probably one of many that will come through our plants supporting the Jubilee.

Enjoy all your celebrations, Draycott! We hope you win the 2022 RHS Award as well.

Right, time to go and find our own bunting and flags!

Welcome to our April 2022 newsletter. This month we’re sharing some event news, plant news, industry news, and ‘design for galvanizing‘ advice.

To read a copy click here.

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As sustainability and good emission management are critical drivers for Joseph Ash Galvanizing, we always try to look for suppliers with like-minded responsible approaches to the environment.

Kall Kwik Birmingham is one of our suppliers, and we were proud to welcome them into our vendor family three years ago, as their green initiatives are admirable.

In 2019 Kall Kwik Birmingham joined Carbon Capture®, a unique market-leading, high impact, low-cost environmental initiative that creates new native woodland in the UK.

Through their involvement with Carbon Capture®, Kall Kwik enables all customers who order paper/print from them to capture the CO2 emissions from their purchases by planting native woodland through the Woodland Trust and the Woodland Carbon Scheme.

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What is Carbon Capture®?

A method of mitigating CO2 emissions and providing a reduced carbon solution for organisations
Creates native woodland in the UK and provides habitats for wildlife and green spaces for all to enjoy
A demonstration of an organisation’s values and responsible approach to the environment.

Woodland Carbon and The Woodland Trust

Woodland is the second-largest sink of CO2 after the oceans
The CO2 is captured by the planting of trees in new native woodland here in the UK through the Woodland Trust’s Government-backed Woodland Carbon Scheme
The scheme operates under the HM Government’s 2011 Woodland Carbon Code www.woodlandcarbon.co.uk
100% of the Carbon Capture charge goes directly to the Woodland Trust to plant native woodland in the UK
The Woodland Trust is the leading UK woodland conservation charity (Charity no. 294344 /SCO38885)
Woodland Trust aims to protect and develop natural woodland throughout the UK, thereby protecting our natural heritage
The Trust owns and manages over 1,000 free-to-visit woodland sites across the UK. The UK has just 13% woodland cover compared to the European average of 37%.

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Since joining Carbon Capture in 2019, Kall Kwik Birmingham has captured over 8500 tonnes of CO2, equating to about 210 sqm of new native woodland – roughly 35 trees!

Dene Sproson from Kall Kwik said:

“This is a fantastic achievement. Kall Kwik Birmingham and our clients should not underestimate this contribution. Whether it be 30 trees, three trees, or 3,000 trees we have helped to plant, our combined contribution to the overall programme is massive!

The critical thing we feel is that Kall Kwik Birmingham and our clients have committed to Carbon Capture®, helping to plant trees and further promote the initiative, which overall contributes to the government’s targets and commitments to NET-ZERO!”

Welcome to the Joseph Ash family Kall Kwik Birmingham. We look forward to a long relationship with you – and to planting more trees!

(Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash)

The Easter bank holidays will soon be upon us, which means our plants will be closed for the long weekend, giving our team members a well-deserved break.

If you have projects that need completing around this time, book the work in early so that we can complete it for you.

All Joseph Ash and Premier Galvanizing plants will be closed from Friday 15 April to Monday 18 April 2022.

We hope you have a great bank holiday weekend too!

Read our latest newsletter – published today! This month features stories on the RIDBA Industry Open Day, the ‘New Steelwork Specification Guide’ published by the BCSA, plant news bites, another RoSPA win, bank holiday operations at our plants, and building a career with Joseph Ash Galvanizing.

To read a copy click here.

To receive a copy of the newsletter in your inbox each month please subscribe.

Simply scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the ‘Newsletter
Sign-Up’ button.

We’re celebrating across the Joseph Ash Group, after landing another RoSPA Gold Award – the internationally-recognised award for demonstrating high health and safety standards.

We have received the RoSPA Gold Health and Safety Award for working hard to ensure our team members, customers, clients, and contractors get home safely to their families at the end of every working day.

Organisations receiving a RoSPA Award are recognised as being world-leaders in health and safety practice. Every year, nearly 2,000 entrants vie to achieve the highest possible accolade in what is the UK’s longest-running H&S industry awards.

The RoSPA Awards scheme is the longest-running of its kind in the UK, and receives entries from organisations across the globe.

Julia Small, RoSPA’s Achievements Director, said: “This is a fantastic and well-deserved accomplishment. All our award entrants demonstrate their unwavering commitment and passion for keeping people safe at work. By receiving this recognition Joseph Ash Galvanizing joins like-minded businesses and organisations worldwide, who represent the very best in their approach to Health and Safety. I would like to add my personal thanks for all the work that it has taken to secure this well-deserved award – congratulations to all those involved, who champion and drive up Health and Safety standards every day. You are a fantastic example to others in your sector.”