Teamwork between two Wedge Group galvanizing plants – B E Wedge at Willenhall and East Anglian Galvanizing near Peterborough – has helped create the tallest paper tower in the world.
The 22 metre-high structure is made from cardboard tubes linked by galvanized steel joints and was a major attraction at the 2009 London Design Festival.
In total over 850 individual components, weighing approximately 3.3 tonnes, were spin-galvanized at B E Wedge on behalf of East Anglian’s customer, Studio Caparo – a London-based design centre.
B E Wedge sales manager Lee Dickens said: “As specialists in spin-galvanizing we carried out the galvanizing for our colleagues at East Anglian on this occasion. Spin-galvanizing was felt to be the best process for this project because of the large number of small parts and because spin-galvanizing is able to remove more of the excess zinc and produce a very smooth finish.”
Each of the assembled galvanized brackets holds up to five cardboard struts and the ‘Paper Tower’ formed a dramatic, cone-shaped centrepiece for the annual design festival in front of the Royal Festival Hall on the capital’s South Bank. ‘Paper Tower’ was sponsored for the design event by Sonoco, a global supplier of industrial and consumer packaging.
