Sawtry firm's record-breaker

TEAMWORK between two Wedge Group galvanizing plants – East Anglian Galvanizing, which opened a new �6million plant at Sawtry earlier this year, and B E Wedge in the West Midlands – has helped create the tallest paper tower in the world. The 22-metre-high

TEAMWORK between two Wedge Group galvanizing plants - East Anglian Galvanizing, which opened a new �6million plant at Sawtry earlier this year, and B E Wedge in the West Midlands - 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, in Willenhall, West Midlands, on behalf of East Anglian's customer, Studio Caparo - a London-based design centre.

"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," said B E Wedge sales manager Lee Dickens.

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.