Crossland Tankers keeps promise

When Northern Ireland-based Crossland Tankers, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of road tankers, took over Burnley-based Massey Tankers earlier this year, Crossland promised “significant additions” to Burnley’s production capability. Crossland is currently fulfilling this promise having recently acquired a six metre seam welder and a six metre wide plate roller for the factory in Burnley.

The new equipment reaffirms Crosslands commitment, ensuring it has the most modern manufacturing facilities available. This means that Crossland customers can expect improved quality and consistency in the tanks, which are already of an extremely high standard.

The new seam welder is the most recent addition and has been operational for approximately four weeks . In tank manufacturing, seam welding is a lengthy process, but Crossland’s new seam welder reduces the number of circumferential welds per tank, resulting in faster production.

Crossland is renowned in the industry for the high quality finish on its tanks, and the new seam welder improves this even further - so much so that it actually reduces the amount of grinding and polishing normally needed for the inside of the tank.

In addition to the increase in efficiency and improved quality, Crossland’s new seam welder also improves health and safety, as the reduction of manual welding means that craftsmen now spend less time inside the tank.
Crossland engineers chose the new SAF manufactured seam welder after visiting the SAF technical centre just outside Paris to assess the machinery. The engineers were very impressed with the quality and reliability of the equipment.

Crossland has been using the new six metre plate roller for approximately two months and the company is impressed with the results so far. Crossland needed the new plate roller to replace older, smaller equipment. Brian Steer, Technical Estimator at Crossland Tankers commented: “The old equipment was a 2.2 metre plate roller, which meant that a rigid tanker was rolled in three sections. Now the new six metre plate roller means that this can be done in one section, which vastly improves our production capabilities.”