The offerings of National Metal Manufacturing & Casting Company (Maadaniyah), Saudi Arabia’s largest independent manufac-turer of steel wires and fasteners, will be augmented following a decision to have two companies merging into it.

The merging firms, both located at Dammam’s Second Industrial City, are Masabic, which operates a foundry plant, and axles maker Mahawer.
National Metal enjoys a turnover of SR200 million ($53.33 million) whilst the other two companies have a combined turnover of SR70 million.
The merger decision was taken by National Industrialis-ation Company (NIC) or Tasnee, the group of which National Metal, Masabic and Mahawer are part.  The merger is in the implementation stage.
National Metal has a capacity to produce more than 60,000 tonnes of wire and wire-related products per year. The product offerings include low relaxation PC wire and PC strand; spring wire, bonnel springs and chassis for mattresses; high- and low-carbon galvanised wires, MIG welding wire and flux cored welding wire; the metric and ASTM ranges of hex bolts (carbon steel and stainless steel), self-drilling and self-tapping screws; concrete (masonry) nails and pallet (coated and uncoated) nails and common wire nails.
Last year the company undertook a major expansion, adding 30,000 tonnes per year for PC and spring wire to the total capacity.
For the value-added fastener products, the company extended the size range for class 4.8 and 8.8 hex bolts from a maximum of M14 dia to M30 while adding to the range 304 stainless bolts. Other product additions during the past few years include precision wound MIG welding wire, flux cored welding wire and wire collated pallet nails.
National Metal’s manufac-turing facilities are spread across 91,000 sq m in the industrial port city of Jubail in the Eastern Province. The company’s products help feed demand within Saudi Arabia, while its export markets are other GCC states and the wider Middle East, South Asia and Europe. Plant facilities include state-of-the-art European machines, an in-house laboratory and testing facilities. Sectors the company serves cover construction, cable steel fabrication and building systems, bedding and seating, fencing, farm equipment, communications, highways, automotives and domestic appliances.
The company has been re-certified for the ISO 9001:2000 quality system.
“In a brief span of 15 years since inception, National Metal has achieved world-class recognition for its product quality, reliability and high service levels,” says Qazi Ebadullah Khan, senior manager (marketing & technical and product development).
Discussing the company’s processes, a company spokesman said: “It has remained part of our ongoing endeavour to maintain an overall competitive edge through strategic capital investments in machinery acquisitions, modernisation, upgrading of laboratory and testing facilities, new product development and intensive internal and external training and development of our human resource, which we believe will continue to propel us ahead to face new challenges of the future and be able to serve our customers even better.”
Merged firm Masabic was established in 1994 and today is one of the most modern foundry plants in Saudi Arabia. The company produces high-quality castings in grey and ductile iron and steel and non-ferrous castings with an annual production capacity of 10,000 tonnes to meet the growing demand from automobile, agriculture, pump, valve and pipefitting industries.
The foundry plant includes a fully computerised automatic green sand-moulding line and two induction-melting furnaces, each of three tonnes capacity. The plant’s facilities apart from furnaces for melting of iron and steel include casting, shot blasting and fettling, heat treatment and a laboratory for chemical analysis equipped with the optical emission vacuum spectrometer, a metallographic examination laboratory for studying microstructures and a mechanical testing laboratory with tensile testers, hardness testers and a charpy impact tester. Other laboratory testing facilities include non-destructive testing with ultrasonic testing unit, magnaflux crack detector, precision metrology equipment and sand testing.
The foundry is equipped to produce a full range of castings in grey, ductile iron, steel and non-ferrous alloys as per customers’ requirements and according to international standards. The annual production capacity is 10,000 tonnes.  The foundry is considered to be one of the largest and most advanced in the region with a fully computerised automatic green sand moulding line and two induction melting furnaces of 3 tonnes capacity each.
Masabic has its own design and pattern department to develop spare parts.
The second merging unit, Mahawer, commercially known as Arabian Axles Manufacturing Company, was incorporated in 1986 with the technical collaboration of War Steiner Achsen of Germany. The factory is well equipped for the production of high-quality axle bogies used in heavy transport vehicles and trailers. Mahawer is said to be one of the finest manufacturers of axles for the automotive industry.
“The merger of Masabic and Mahawer with National Metal will further synergise its profitable growth, enable diversification of its product lines, increase market share, increase its purchasing power, improve productivity and reduce costs, benefit customers and, more importantly, increase company value to stockholders from its financial and management restructuring,” Khan said.
“National Metal has charted its path to be amongst the leading regional manufacturers and suppliers of high-quality engineering goods serving the diverse needs of the civil, chemical, metallurgical and electrical industries of the region,” added Khan.