This year's Stainless Steel World Conference & Expo 2001 took place in The Hague, from 13-15 November. The theme of the event, "Meeting Challenges", reflected the development of new fields of application, the increasing requirements from the process industries and the ongoing drive to reduce maintenance costs and improve plant performance. The result was a total of 46 paper presentations and nine workshops covering these issues, often stirring up healthy discussion among attendees. The conference attracted 224 delegates, from suppliers to end users. 2100 material professionals visited the Expo where over 100 companies from the industry showed their latest developments and solutions to any kind of problem. Altogether a high-quality event, and reason enough to look forward to the next event, which will be held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in November 2003.
Technical plant tour
This year's event started out with a technical plant tour to one of the largest industrial complexes in The Netherlands, Shell Pernis. Participants were welcomed by PR official Mr Wim van der Wiel who informed the audience about the safety and environmental issues that concern a site like Pernis.
Conference
At the opening session, chairman Michael Renner (Bayer Corporation, USA) and conference director Sjef Roymans welcomed the attendees and stressed the fact that, in spite of all the travel restrictions and the current political, military and economic turmoil, judged by the number of delegates and exhibitors, the conference could already be called a success. Mr Renner continued by giving a short overview of the days to come and focused on the importance of the workshops and paper sessions.
After the opening remarks, two speakers kicked off. Hans van der Winden (Fairwind Materials Consultancy and chairman of the 1999 event) held a presentation on the vices and virtues of supermartensitic stainless steels. Next, Mats Liljas (AvestaPolarit) informed the audience about the fatigue behaviour of stainless steel welds.
Workshops and presentations
Workshops and paper presentations form an integral part of the information exchange during an event such as this one. One workshop dealt with procurement and was hosted by Fred Nast and Dr. Axel Schmidt, both from Krupp Uhde. As the trend in the international plant construction industry is leading towards ever shorter project-execution periods with increasing quality requirements, the issue of qualified suppliers is getting more and more important. During the workshop, Mr Nast and Dr. Schmidt both required the input of those present, which led to a lively atmosphere. Even after the two-hour interactive session had finished, the discussion went on amongst some of the listeners in a more private setting.
In the afternoon programme, Edward Naylor from Akzo Nobel hosted a workshop on failure cases and prevention. He too motivated the audience's input by letting everyone introduce himself. It appeared that the audience, consisting mainly of engineers and material specialists from different companies around the world as well as two university professors. Mr Naylor explained that his workshop was aimed at discussing failures in stainless steel and discused specific cases, such as chloride stress corrosion cracking and cracks in welds. Some of the attendees used of the opportunity to come forward and show some of their corrosion problems. Of course not all problems could be solved in one workshop, but it was a good way to share experiences and to find a route that may eventually lead to valuable answers.
David Peacock (TMA) and Ian Westaby (RTI) moderated a workshop on titanium, focusing on the use of titanium in severe environments and the availability and benefits of this material. Four papers were presented here.
Graham Hammersby (Metal Improvement Company) was next to talk about controlled shot peening, a technique for surface treatment of stainless steels and titanium alloys to improve fatigue strength and prevent stress corrosion cracking.
Elisabeth Tørstad (DNV) informed us about the recommended practice for titanium risers and stress joints in the offshore industry.
The last of the speakers was David Peacock, who addressed possible cost reductions in extraction and processing of titanium.
Breakfast seminars
During the conference, Stainless Steel World had organised two commercial seminars for exhibitors for the first time. The purpose of these seminars was to give exhibitors an update on the prospects of the global market for corrosion-resistant alloys.
On Wednesday morning, Markus Moll (Steel & Metals Market Research) had the honour to be the first speaker in this setting. Mr Moll did a presentation on the status and outlook for stainless steels, together with his colleague, Michael Haberl. In their presentation, they covered all the relevant areas such as end-user markets, price situation, producers and future developments.
On Thursday morning, it was Vivian Woodward (European Industrial Forecasting) who informed the early listeners on his views of the world market for CRAs, with special reference to the power generation and process industries.
Expo
As always, the expo formed a great opportunity for end users to see what suppliers have on offer and often to do business on the spot. This year there were 100 exhibitors, ranging from stainless steel makers to pipe, plate and fittings manufacturers, stockists, distributors, fabricators and suppliers of welding consumables and equipment.
Photo gallery
You can view a small photo gallery of the SSW2001 Conference & Expo (5 photographs) below.