Geha Laverman is undisputedly the largest wear products supplier in Europe, but is it also the heaviest? The football field-sized outdoor area of the Zaandam site is packed with sheet material. Daily deliveries and supplies of new stock keep each other in balance. All an extremely weighty business; will you lift with me?
The warehouse stock of steel plates at the Zaandam site is beyond any real imagination. Millions of kilos of HARDOX material in various qualities are piled up there. Most sheets are six metres long and two metres wide. A plate with a thickness of 150 mm brings in 10,200 kg. Obviously, there are smaller plate(s) of only 16 kg, but they are a millimetre thick.
An SSAB certificate"
Every week, the HARDOX stockpile shrinks by at least 10 per cent as a result of delivery. Needless to say, the same quantity is also supplied at the same rate.
Experience shows that it is impossible to stack sheets sorted. The demands for certain sheet thicknesses in combination with the desired quality are too diverse for that. Any outsider is dizzy at the apparent chaos of sheet material. Yet there is a logic that has been tried and tested for years. Every board, regardless of quality and thickness, has a so-called ID: an SSAB certificate. And is, wherever it is in the field, always traceable.
Not every sheet is completely cut in the workshop. This means that remnants are also added to the stock.
Plate numbers combined with certificates are kept in the plate library. Thus, after years, the material specifications of each cut product can be retrieved and presented to customers if necessary.
We continue to be weighty. At Geha Laverman in Alphen a/d Rijn, they are even weightier than in Zaandam. No workshop and no sheets of HARDOX to be seen at this location, but cast wear parts from Magotteaux, for example. A huge covered warehouse has a lot in stock there. Every week, the Alphen site is supplied by a dozen heavy transport trailers.
