Lasting Bonds Secure Success for Folsom Firm American Galvanizing working to become the biggest dipper
Originally Published in The Press of Atlantic City Marketplace. Section G Sunday, August 25, 2002
Lasting Bonds Secure Success for Folsom Firm
American Galvanizing working to become the biggest dipper
By: Joseph Swavy
Staff Writer, (609) 272-7253
FOLSOM – The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa hasn’t been completed, but John Gregor has already done his part to make sure the steel in the $1 billion structure lasts.
As president of American Galvanizing Co., Gregor was responsible for ensuring the structural steel will weather the harsh, corrosive conditions brought on by the casino hotel’s seaside location.
To do that, each piece of the Borgata’s steel was galvanized, a process that requires it to be dipped in molten zinc. The zinc bonds with the steel to form a impact-resistant layer that prevents rust and deterioration.
“The Borgata gas provided us with a lot of work,” Gregor said. “A lot of it is in the parking garages and you don’t even see it. If galvanizing is doing its job, you don’t even know it.”
American Galvanizing has been protecting steel products since 1982, when its parent company, Virginia American Industries, purchased the facility on Route 54 from a guardrail manufacturer, Gregor said. He said the guardrail company had started the galvanizing operation for its own products in 1979, but quickly found it didn’t have the volume needed to make running the kettle a profitable operation.
Gregor, a steel plate fabricator with no galvanizing experience, was sent to run the facility in 1986 and was charged with turning around the operation.
“I put my boots on learning it from the bottom up as quickly as I could,” he said. “We have grown every year since.”
In 1987, the company galvanized about 10 million pounds of steel, Gregor said. Last year more than 45 million pounds of steel was galvanized, and this year American Galvanizing is on pace to dip more than 50 million pounds of steel and generate about $8 million in revenues.
“We’ve grown the business by growing our kettle capacity,” Gregor said. “Our kettle capacity has been increased three times.”
The kettle the company inherited in 1982 was a 5 feet deep, 5 feet wide and 36.5 feet long. The company later increased its capacity by adding a kettle that was 6 feet deep.
In 2000, American Galvanizing spent more than $5million to upgrade its facility, including the addition of a new kettle that has been dubbed “the Double Nickel” by company officials. The kettle is 6.5 feet wide, 8.5 feet deep and 55 feet long and when it was installed, it was the biggest kettle east of the Mississippi River. A facility in Lebanon, Pa., has since claimed that distinction.
The larger kettle not only allows American Galvanizing to handle larger pieces of steel, it also allows the company to gain a greater economy of scale by bundling more pieces together for each dip. The company – which has a total workforce of about 75, including sales and office staff – galvanizes about 200,000 pounds of steel each day.
The galvanizing process requires steel to first be submerged in a caustic tank where an alkaline solution removes dirt, oil and grease. From there, the steel is dipped in an acid tank where it is “pickled” by a solution of hydrochloric acid that gets rid of any rust or mill scale.
After the acid tank, the steel is immersed in a tank containing a zinc ammonium chloride solution that prevents any oxidation before the steel is dipped in the molten zinc.
The steel is then dipped in the zinc, which is kept heated to about 850 degrees by six, high-velocity natural gas burners. If the temperature drops below 790 degrees the zinc would turn to a solid, ruining the kettle, Gregor said.
“This is heavy industry, it’s the bowels of industry,” Gregor said. “Even with all of the technology, it’s still very much a manual business. We touch every piece we galvanize.”
The longest piece of steel the company has galvanized was the 80-foot pole section of a cellular phone tower, Gregor said. The pole, which wouldn’t fit fully in the kettle, was “double dipped,” meaning about half of the pole was submerged at a time.
Having of the largest kettles in the East has helped American Galvanizing attract business from outside the southern New Jersey and Philadelphia regions, and the company now boasts customers from Maine to Tennessee, Gregor said.
“Galvanizing to a certain extent is a very regional business, but you can get into another company’s regions if you can provide something that they can’t provide,” he said.
American Galvanizing also has weathered a slowing economy by pitching its services to a wide variety of steel users. In addition to treating steel for building construction, the company has, among other things, galvanized steel that is being used for bridge decks, railing at the Philadelphia Eagles’ new stadium and for shelves at Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse stores.
“We’ve been resilient in this recession, Gregor said. When one market drops off, we’ve been able to replace it with something else. When the cellular market fell flat on its face, we were fortunate enough to pick up the bridge business.”
jswavy@pressofac.com
