Real ROI: Putting Hard Numbers to Wear Material Investment
To justify investment, we need to benchmark the cost of premium wear materials vs. the cost of downtime, replacement, labor, safety risk etc.:
- Extended Lifecycle: In many woodyard applications, replacing standard steel parts with overlay/carbon/tungsten carbide materials has doubled or tripled component life. E.g. sprocket teeth, conveyor chains – life increased by 100–200% or more.
- Reduced Maintenance Intervals: Less frequent inspections, less “emergency” fixes, fewer partial shutdowns. If you typically replace a liner every 6 months, moving to a material which lasts 18 months means a 66% reduction in replacement cycles, labor, and associated downtime.
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership: Though premium carbide overlay materials (such as SureAlloy®) cost more per square foot, over their lifespan the cost per hour or per ton of throughput becomes far lower. Additionally, smoother surfaces or special overlays (such as RapidFlow®) can reduce friction and carry-back, lowering energy use and cleaning costs.
- Safety and Regulatory Savings: Fewer breakdowns means fewer injury risks; less exposure to maintenance in hazardous locations; possibly fewer regulatory incidents or downtime associated with safety investigations.
- Operational Efficiency Gains: More consistent throughput; fewer variations in process caused by failing parts; better quality control leading to fewer rejects and less waste.
As an example: one plant might see an unscheduled outage every 2–3 months due to liner or chute failure, taking 8-12 hours for each repair. If upgrading materials reduces that to once per year, that’s dozens of hours saved, plus not losing production or having to “clean up” after failure. Multiply that by labour cost, lost production margin, and other costs and savings can often pay back a premium wear solution in 1–2 years, or less.
SAS Global: Engineered Solutions Approach
At
SAS Global, we don’t just sell wear plates. We provide a fully customized engineered wear protection solution:
- SAS has over 70 years of experience with wear-resistant materials to rely on when choosing materials with the right hardness, toughness, corrosion resistance, and impact resistance for each application. (E.g. overlay vs through-hardened alloy.)
- SAS offers proprietary materials like
SureAlloy® (SA6000®, SA2000®, SA1750CR®, RapidFlow®),
Vanguard®, etc., each optimized for specific wear mechanisms.
- SAS custom engineers components (chutes, liners, hoppers, screws, cyclones etc.) to reduce turbulence, hang-ups, abrasion hotspots. Proper fit matters, misaligned or poorly installed liners can fail prematurely.
- Custom fabrication & ease of installation matter: fewer hours to install, fewer adjustments needed, less impact on production schedule.
Safety & Environmental Considerations
Often overlooked in purely cost-based ROI is how improved wear-resistant materials enhance safety and environmental performance:
- Fewer maintenance interventions in hazardous zones: Less exposure of personnel to moving machinery, hot surfaces, or corrosive/abrasive materials.
- Less dust, fewer airborne particles: When material flows smoothly (rather than in a turbulent fashion causing dust), air quality improves.
- Reduced leaks or spillage: Worn liners in pumps, pipes, troughs can lead to leaks of slurry or chemicals—leading to slip risks, environmental contamination, regulatory risk.
- Energy savings: Worn equipment often operates inefficiently—pumps and conveyors draw more power; friction losses and turbulence waste energy. Smoother and proper wear protection helps reduce those losses.
Challenges & Best Practices
To maximize value, you shouldn’t just buy the hardest wear-resistant material. Common poor material selection pitfalls include:
- Mismatch between wear mechanism and material: Abrasion, impact, and corrosion each require different material properties. Very hard but brittle materials may crack under impact; tough materials may wear quickly under abrasion if the hardness is low.
- Poor fabrication / improper fit: Gaps, misalignment, and undersized fasteners all can degrade performance and accelerate wear.
- Neglecting design of contact zones and flow dynamics: Chute angles, material velocity, flow turbulence, and impingement angle—all affect wear significantly. Good material won’t fix a bad design.
- Ignoring cost of downtime: It’s easy to focus purely on material cost; but labor, lost production, safety risk, and variable quality often dwarf the cost of premium wear materials.
- Lack of monitoring: To know whether an upgrade is performing, you must track wear rates, inspect components, record downtime, and compare. This data is essential.
Conclusion: Wear Liners Are Not a Luxury, They’re a Strategic Asset
In today’s Pulp & Paper Industry environment, margins are tight, regulatory and safety pressures are high, and outage costs are steep. Premium wear-resistant liners and components are not just “nice to have”—they are strategic assets. The proper material selection, coupled with skilled engineering, installation, and monitoring, delivers:
- Longer service life
- Less unexpected downtime
- Reduced maintenance and safety risk
- Better product quality and consistency
- Lower total cost of ownership
At SAS Global, we view every wear issue, not just the symptom, but the upstream design, material choice, and downstream maintenance plan. Pulp and Paper Industry Facilities that take a systems approach; matching the right wear materials to the specific wear environment in the woodyard, fiber handling, chemical zones, etc., are those that achieve the greatest returns.
If your facility is dealing with frequent component failures, safety incidents during maintenance, or spiraling maintenance costs, it may well be that the wear materials just aren’t right for the job.
Investing in engineered wear solutions is one of the most direct levers you have to improve production performance, safety, and profitability.
