Since 2011, Afrox has invested over R10-million in upgrades at its Special Gases Propellant Plant in Roodekop, effectively positioning the company as a well-established supplier to South Africa’s FMCG personal care market.
Personal care propellant requires that stringent quality standards are met and that propellant gas contains no odours or impurities. As part of the upgrades at the production facility, Afrox has ensured that the company meets these standards, says Nadine Baird, Product Manager – Chemicals at Afrox.

“One of our guiding principles is the supply of quality product. We source and supply product to the highest standards and our filtration system allows us to remove sulphurs, dienes and moisture,” says Baird. 

Part of the upgrades also included the commissioning of strategic storage tanks in the Gauteng region that will allow Afrox to have continuous supply in the event of an unplanned shutdown by suppliers. “We want our customers to have peace of mind, and focus on their core business whilst we as the supplier of choice ensure consistent supply.

As part of the global Linde Group, we are able to leverage off the Linde supply chain, and import product at lower rates and have assured flexibility. In 2016, we successfully imported over 750 tonnes of product, thus we had full supply to all our contracted customers with no product rationing or short supply,” says Baird.

Additional upgrades to the propellant plant included the installation of state-of-the-art laboratory equipment which enables Afrox to provide accurate and live certificates of analysis with each load that leaves the Afrox site. This system offers a wide range of components analysed in a short space of time from percentage concentrations to part per billion concentrations.

The cosmetic propellants offer a unique challenge as some of the components that can be harmful elutes close to the background, thus good separation is of the utmost importance to quantify these components to ensure that the end customer can use Afrox’s cosmetic grade propellants with total confidence.

“Afrox operates strict policies regarding product stewardship and the responsible and ethical management of health, safety and the environmental aspects of a product,” says Baird. “We can assist our customers to identify product risks and hazards and help identify mitigation measures for these risks. We can also perform safety audits on a customer site if the customer requires assistance.

“The future of propellants is very exciting. Afrox has so much more to offer than just quality gas. We have technical expertise, product supply security, a world-class telemetry system that allows remote monitoring of tanks and we are flexible to meet our customer’s needs,” concludes Baird. Afrox is the leading gases and welding partner in sub-Saharan Africa and celebrates 90 years of operation this year.