LONG-TERM business relationships and their customers have been key factors in the success of PH Heat, a metal heat treatment company celebrating its 50th anniversary this month.

Cecil Zlotnick, the majority owner, says the company's core strength has been in the depth and range of its experience in metal heat treatment and associated furnace atmosphere control using industrial gases.

“Looking back from this milestone (reaching 50 years), I would say our company has based its successful growth on a sound foundation of long-term relationships with our technology partners, equipment suppliers and customers.

“We are also proud to have a team of qualified and experienced management and staff.”

Despite the economic downturn, Zlotnick says his company is struggling to meet the demand, particularly from key customers in the mining and engineering sectors. “We are running our plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and only close at Christmas and Easter. Right now we are so busy that we are struggling to cope."

The company was founded in 1958 and has gained a wealth of experience in ferrous and non ferrous heat treatment, and regards itself as being a top expert in the use of gas atmospheres in heat treatment.

Zlotnick says that heat treatment involves enhancing the mechanical properties of metal components so that they can be used in highly stressed conditions like underground mining, where components not heat treated would simply not work.

The company offers a number of heat-treatment processes to get the most out of metals and alloys, particularly steel.

Zlotnick, a metallurgical engineer and 90% owner, bought the company in 1981 from the original owners, D Pretorius and P Hilliard, and has been at the helm ever since.

"I took over PH Heat Treatment in partnership with accountant Philip Becker (who emigrated in 1991) with a view to taking it from an antiquated operation to a full-spectrum hi tech company, offering a suite of heat-treatment solutions.

“Until then the company had offered traditional market processes such as pack carburising, cyanide hardening in salt baths and box furnace annealing and hardening. I introduced Afrox's controlled furnace atmosphere systems for gas carburising, carbonitriding, neutral hardening, normalising and carbon restoration in modern sealed quench and shaker hearth furnaces."

He says these technologies, together with a significant investment in capital equipment, boosted the company's output by 100%, and by 1984 it had outgrown the original premises in Cleveland.

“That year we moved to our current site in Activia Park, later expanding again to adjacent premises. We have continued to add capital equipment and new processes over the years and are still doing so. The company has a comprehensive array of state of-the-art equipment and an extensive customer base of local companies."

To grow the business, in 1994 Zlotnick sold a 10% stake to works manager Dale Boxshall Smith, who had joined the company in 1991 with 10 years experience in heat treatment.

The company grew from strength to strength, focusing on, and becoming a leader, in controlled furnace atmosphere heat treatment, its speciality niche market. Today, the company's facilities include six Ipsen and four Efco and Birlec sealed quench furnaces, shaker hearth and tempering furnaces and facilities for suz-zero treatment, glass and shot blasting and a pit nitriding plant.

This investment in equipment saw the company's output increase from 10 tons a month in 1981 to about 500 tons.

Zlotnick says he has developed a customised in-house information system to track, price and record statistics on all customers and their orders, including generation of job cards, test certificates pricing, invoice control, proof of delivery and logistics. This management system has improved customer service significantly.

The company had also revamped its process control systems by introducing the latest computerised process controllers that, Zlotnick says, “took process control a quantum leap forward".

Quality control is now provided by a fully automated metallographic on-site laboratory, allowing for micro-hardness testing and quenching oil-rate testing. “In 2003 we teamed up with Nitrex in Canada to bring to the local market a unique process for controlled gas nitriding and nitro carburising, developed over two decades.

“This niche range of heat treatment processes, applied particularly to steel components, can provide unique combinations of wear and corrosion resistance to engineering components, together with resistance to scuffing and seizure.

“We were the first licensee in Africa, and today we hold exclusive rights to Nitrex's Nitreg, Nitreg C, ONC and Cor-Check gas nitriding processes for SA. “Our multipurpose two-tonne capacity NX-1015 Nitreg pit furnace was the first of its kind in Africa."

He says the future looks bright for the company, which intends to continue investing in new technology and further improve and enhance customer service and the range of applications it offers. “We are leaders in our niche market and we want to carry on expanding and diversifying into other allied fields of heat treatment and do what we know best."

However, he says rising input costs, particularly of energy, gas and labour, were worrying. In particular, Zlotnick was scathing about power utility Eskom, whose tariffs he says have gone crazy.

“We have to continue to be competitive and profitable but we face the challenges of rising costs, especially electricity from Eskom, which is one of our largest input costs, followed by gas from Sasol and of course labour. The other challenge is the cost of imports, as we have to import things like burner equipment and electrical components and elements that are not made locally and this has become expensive particularly in view of the exchange rate."

The company is confident it will soon be BEE compliant and is working with a consultant to improve its scorecard. It is buying supplies from companies that are BEE compliant, he says.

Source: Business Day