Steel Construction Vol 40 No 3 - Mining, Industrial, Import/ Export | Page 7

SAISC profile
column (254 x 254 x 132), for use in the Mopani Headgear Project
that we’ve entered for the 2016 Steel Awards (See Pg 18 for Project).
These were sections that we would have bought from the mill.
As far as costs are concerned we estimate that a fabricated beam
would cost 20 to 40% more than a mill produced beam, depending
on the foot weight of that particular beam. The driver of cost
on a beam welding line is linear meters, not tonnes. The lighter
the beam is, the higher the labour component of the fabricating
of that beam becomes. The heavier the beam is, the smaller the
labour component is as a percentage of the overall cost. So it really
depends on the particular beam we are producing.
There are other drivers of cost,