Hot-dip galvanized steel has the future

He has been Managing Director of Zinkinfo Benelux since March of this year, but he is by no means a stranger to the steel construction industry. For the past thirty years, Rien Gerritsen has mostly worked as a director at Voortman Staalbouw, Hutten Metaal, Imetaal Staalbouw, Stahlbau and Averesch Bouw en Ontwikkeling. So with hot-dip galvanizing he is very familiar. And the first months at interest group Zinkinfo Benelux have been good.

Gerritsen is a man of "no bullshit but polish. "In that respect, I was right in the steel construction business. A deal is a deal and you get down to business quickly. With the construction company the click was a little less, because the processes are long and there are often arguments down to the smallest details. That's not my thing, so we decided to part ways. Then a headhunter called to see if I was interested in the position of general manager at Zink-info Benelux. The expectations there appealed to me very much and they proved to be true in the first few months. You can say that I'm comfortable here."

About the goals for the coming years, Gerritsen is clear. "The trend for some years now has been that everything has to be more sustainable, greener and circular, and we fully support that. The good thing is that hot-dip galvanized steel is a sustainable and also circular material, only we still have to communicate that more clearly. People think that a lot of energy is required to galvanize steel, and it is true that energy is required to heat a zinc bath to 450°C. But with that one-time investment, a steel part will last up to 50 years. Over the entire life cycle, it is a good investment. Moreover, galvanizers are going off gas in droves.

Hot-dip galvanizing can be fully electrified. If you combine that with solar panels on the roofs of the galvanizing plants and perhaps, in time, batteries next to them, then we are all round as far as energy management is concerned. Speaking of batteries: in fact, the zinc bath is also an energy battery. It is not turned on every day; it is like a boiler, where the temperature is constantly maintained."

The zinc industry is also working on the footprint of the entire process. Gerritsen: "Green zinc is the latest trend. This is made with sixty percent less CO2 emissions. This starts as early as the mining of the raw material and is fully controlled with certificates all the way through to distribution. It is a bit more expensive, but if you are building projects where the client has strict sustainability requirements, this can be a big deal. By the way, hot-dip galvanized steel is excellent to decompose back into zinc and steel, so a fully circular material."

At the building level, hot-dip galvanized steel shows even more advantages when it comes to sustainable and circular construction. "Because the structure is hot-dip galvanized and therefore cathodically protected against damage, you don't have to touch up the preservation, you don't have to touch up damage, and the drill holes stay good as well," Gerritsen explains. "I know that mechanics hate touching up damage; with constructions made of hot-dip galvanized steel, they can go on assembling just fine. An additional advantage of this property is that hot-dip galvanized steel structures can be easily reused without deterioration. On our website there is a nice example of a parking garage at Eindhoven Airport. It was built in 2007 next to the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein, moved two years later to Strijp-S in Eindhoven and now stands on the airport site with the desired modifications. This is possible because the steel, whose service life has been maximized by galvanizing in accordance with NEN-EN-ISO-1461, is still in excellent condition." 

Preservation can be taken a step further with a duplex system, which also falls under the focus of Zinkinfo Benelux. Here, hot-dip galvanized steel is provided with powder coating or a wet paint system in a second process. Gerritsen: "This gives the steel optimum protection inside and out. The advantage for architects is that they can give steel structures the color they want. Powder coating also ensures that non-inspectable parts in buildings and structures are extra protected." 

Gerritsen's calendar will soon feature the fourteenth edition of the Benelux Trophy For Hot-dip Galvanizing. For this biennial competition, the jury deliberation was on June 16, the result of which will be announced at the Zinkinfo Relations Day in September. "After that, we will get ready for next year's Intergalva to be held in Bruges from June 10 to 14. This triennial conference, organized by the European General Galvanizers Association, brings together some 700 galvanizers from 64 countries around the world. We will be there, of course. Meanwhile, the industry will put a lot of time into keeping our members' knowledge and regulations up to date and there is continued attention to training. To this end, Zink-info is providing guest lectures at colleges of secondary and higher education, which is where the future lies, and we are holding knowledge sessions for structural engineers and architects. Our agenda is well filled."