Saldanha

Once we have left left that towns that have succumbed to the dreadful "Plett Syndrome," now starts what many have told me is the start of the real West Coast. Like many others confronted with a seemingly obvious and self-explanatory statement like that I merely nodded with  confident certainty that showed that I understood, I was in the know, I was hip; when in fact I had no idea what was so real about it.

But when I arrived at Saldanha I saw why there was a differentiation. What struck me about this town and the others surrounding it, such as Paternoster, Vredenburg, St Helena Bay and Velddrif; was that these towns -- and I hate saying like this -- are the kind of towns that, were you to take kids to, they would disown you for threatening their lives with terminal boredom (unless they have their Blackberries, then they are a self-contained unit).

You can see that they are not driven nor sustained by tourism, asides from the multiple guest houses that litter the Beach Road (Strand St) amongst the palm trees. The monolithic Steel Mill looms in the background like the ravaged carcass of a fallen titan, now part of that landscape. They are are not packages for external consumption; they still retain more than a semblance of their initial purpose. So if you want to see what South Africa is like outside of the commercials and travel shows, then this is a good place to start.

Saldanha Steel

Just before you get to Saldanha, you drive past a monolithic building; the Saldanha Steel Mill. It is an impressive sight. Seeing as you guys are not on the road with me (in person at least) I thought I would share this with you.

The place is owned by Iscor Limited and the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa. It produces up to 1.25 million tons of hot-rolled coils of steel sheet for the export market. It is smaller and more efficient than normal steel mills. Unlike other steel mills that use scrap feed iron, they use virgin iron ore. In fact, it is the only steel mill in the world that does this. It is the largest private capital projects ever undertaken by South Africa, costing around 8 billion rand.

Construction started in 1996, and the first steel was produced in 1998. The plant itself is 1.2 kilometers long. The average buildings are between 20 and 45 meters high. The Mildrex and Corex Plants are 88 and 115 meters high respectively. The architectural was inspired by the massive scale architecture found in the middle ages. There are 50 pyramid shapes and torrents that are purely aesthetic.

The average hot-rolled coils are around 12 to 26 tons, and if unrolled at 1 mm thick the length would be 2.5 kilometres long. The trains that carry the steel are around 2.3 kilometers long. The longest train that has ever been used to transport steel was in South Africa, the Monster Train, which was 7.28 kilometers long.