Silo renovation at Albeton, Diemen

Albeton, a concrete plant in Diemen near Amsterdam, wanted its cement silos and the surrounding steel infrastructure fully renovated and repainted. After years of service the installation looked the way steel in wind and weather does: corrosion spots on the silo walls, weathered paint on the support structures and a conveyor installation that had lost its best colour.

The scope covered treatment of all corrosion spots, full sanding and cleaning of the surfaces, local touch-ups and a complete new finishing coat across the silos, support structures, piping and conveyor installation.

One condition was fixed: the plant could not close. Mixer trucks kept loading all day underneath the silos we were working on, and the conveyor belts stayed in service. On top of that, all work was at height.

That meant tight phasing per zone, strict safety measures and daily coordination with the production planning: every morning it was agreed which zones were released, where the mixers could load and where we could work without anyone standing below us.

We worked through the installation zone by zone, each time in the same order. First a thorough high-pressure clean of the full surface, manual derusting of corroded zones to St2/St3 and complete sanding of the existing coating so the new layers can key in. Then dust-free, and only then paint.

The build-up was a three-coat PPG Sigma system: bare and rusted spots first received a local primer of SigmaCover 350 Alu, then a full intermediate coat of SigmaCover 350, and finally the polyurethane topcoat SigmaDur 550H, each zone in its own colour: blue (RAL 5009) on the silos, grey (RAL 7022) on the support structures and yellow (RAL 1003) on the accents. That way every zone received its complete system before we moved to the next one, and the number of occupied work zones stayed limited at any moment.

That phasing let production keep running while the installation visibly renewed: no large shut-down zones, but every week another part of the plant finished.

The full renovation was delivered in two and a half weeks, without a production stop. The silos, support structures, piping and conveyor installation received their complete new finishing coat, and Albeton kept an installation that can face the Dutch climate for years again.

In parallel with Diemen, our team also carried out blasting and painting works at the Albeton site in Amsterdam, with blasting to Sa 2.5 and the same coating system. For us this double project proved that our way of working travels across the border: the same phasing and safety approach we apply daily in the port of Antwerp works just as well on operational sites in the Netherlands.