The continuing development of the massive Horizon Oil Sands facilities in Alberta Canada (total investment will exceed $10 billion) required the construction of an OPP (Ore Preparation Plant).  The wet side of this plant (known as a SPP or Slurry Preparation Plant) where oil sand ore is liquefied for further treatment presents serious corrosion challenges to both the machinery and the building structure itself.

Further challenges included that Krupp engineers designed this plant to be re-locatable and have an extra-long service life as demanded by Horizon.  Stricter than normal structural steel requirements needed to insure proper fit of the many complex and enormous pieces of interconnected machinery further tested all players.

These challenges opened the door to hot-dip galvanizing which historically has not been widely used at oil extraction sites.  Careful participation in the design of steel components for galvanizing was critical to insure high quality and cost effective coatings while insuring safety in the galvanizing plant.

Our high capacity automated galvanizing plant streamlined the process of delivering beautifully galvanized product while our data capture systems insured proper identification and full traceability of every component processed, especially critical at such remote job sites.

This new state of the art OPP brings oil production costs to new lows for Alberta oil sands thanks to high efficiency equipment design and much longer amortisation due in part to hot-dip galvanizing adding to service life.  This growing interest in longer service life in the Canadian oil sector is a great opportunity for the galvanizing industry to offer our unparalleled hot-dip galvanizing value equation to a huge new market!    

Continuous improvements like those at Horizon Oil Sands are helping build cost-competitive North American energy independence while also lessening our dependence on imports from unstable and dangerous regions of the world.