The Farmlander - February 2021

Page 56

From sand to steel Summit Steel & Wire’s fencing products are world renowned for their durability and market-leading quality. Made in Christchurch, New Zealand using only the highest quality raw materials in their state-of-the-art production facility, Summit has been tried and proven in the harshest conditions and the most testing applications across the globe.

It’s here that the raw iron-ore billet

But what is it that separates their products from the rest?

markets for many decades.

Summit’s rural fencing products are manufactured from the highest quality primary metals in the world.

manufacturer with control of its

| Steel billet being poured.

upstream raw material inputs thereby

In the Newcastle processing plant, the

maintaining strict control over the

billet enters an electric arc furnace to

Summit’s raw materials are sourced from the Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia’s Middleback Ranges, 400km North-West of Adelaide. Here 1.2 million tonnes of iron-ore is

quality of the steel rod that is its key

be stretched into its final wire form.

input to wire manufacturing.

Then it is sent through for its two gas

InfraBuild Wire is a leader in galvanised

wipe layer coatings of zinc/aluminium.

wire production technology operating

The gas wipe coating differs from

a number of galvanising lines with a

other ways of manufacturing, as it

produced every year where it is turned into commercial grade billet feed.

significant portion of their capacity

allows the wire an even spread of the

reserved for production of the corrosion

zinc/aluminium layer. Other methods

The billet is then sent to an InfraBuild processing plant, in the New South Wales beach town of Newcastle.

resistant Zinc/Aluminium coated LifeMax® wires. This is the wire that

can leave an uneven coating which

Summit uses in its fencing products.

for rust to appear sooner.

| Summit Steel & Wire coils in production.

56 | THE FARMLANDER

is turned into the class leading wire used in the manufacture of Summit fencing products. Summit’s key raw material supplier, Infrabuild Wire, has a long and proud year history in wire production — over 100 years — and has been manufacturing high quality fencing products for the Australian and international InfraBuild is a fully integrated steel

promotes patchy wear and the potential

| Red hot billet on the production line.

Farmlands Co-operative Society Limited | © February 2020. All rights reserved.

WWW.FARMLANDS.CO.NZ


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