GIW Industries, the leader in the design and manufacture of heavy duty centrifugal slurry equipment, pumps, and parts, is expanding its REGEN Service Centre in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada to meet the growing needs of the nearby oil sands industry. Construction is moving along even with the frigid temperatures experienced recently. GIW hopes to see stock moving into the expansion by June.

A typical hydrotransport pump can have individual components that weigh up to 37,000 pounds. Bigger pumps and parts also require more mechanical service work and staging space. To ensure oil sands customers can get the local service they need, the GIW Centre is expanding from 19,000 to 29,000 square feet of climate controlled building, not including the half-acre of outdoor stockyard. The expansion will afford a larger and more efficient area to meet the expanding oil sands market’s slurry needs.

More than just pumps
In addition to installation, commissioning, and maintenance supervision, the centre provides in-house inventory and repair, maintenance inspection, system efficiency services, technical consultancy, training, and retrofit services.

GIW’s goal is to ensure that parts are on-hand and available when needed to protect customers against unexpected downtime. To meet this goal, the facility oftentimes houses over $8 million worth of inventory and accepts two dedicated stock trucks every week and contract trucks as needed. GIW also consistently tracks each of their customer’s projects to maintain an inventory level that meets their anticipated maintenance needs.

The facility is also equipped to handle repairs. Rebuild capabilities include in-house service technicians who assemble to OEM specifications and standards. And to ensure the cleanest possible rebuild, the facility houses a dust-free clean room environment for bearing installation and final assembly.

With the expansion, the Fort McMurray REGEN Service Centre’s expanded capabilities will include servicing to more than just pumps: GIW is proud to be an authorized RENEW facility for Falk-Rexnord Canada, offering repair services for gear reducers and other related drive equipment.

This service centre is also equipped to handle the challenges of remote customers. GIW understands that because of the remote location of the oil sands, it’s time-consuming and expensive to ship equipment back to the manufacturer for maintenance that could potentially be performed on site. This is why the Fort McMurray location provides local experts who are on call to diagnose problems and repair or refurbish parts on site as needed.

A rich history in hydrotransport 
GIW has been providing slurry expertise to the oils sands industry since the mid-1980s. GIW was instrumental in pioneering the switch from rubber lined pumps to hard metal pumps that allowed more than double the wear life in tailings applications. After this success, the industry began to consider using all-metal pumps for hydrotransport, a new technology at the time that aimed to reduce the costs of mining oil-sands deposits. GIW engineers tested tailings sand from the mine in their Hydraulic Testing Laboratory and proved that this was a more efficient and less costly means of long distance transport. The current oil sands boom has resulted in larger mines located further away from the processing plants, making GIW’s contribution to the industry even more significant.

In addition to the Fort McMurray location, GIW has REGEN Service Centers located in Thomson, Ga., Mulberry, Fla., and Hibbing, Minn. These service centers assemble new pumps, store inventory, rebuild and service existing pumps, and a wealth of other service activities. All GIW equipment is rebuilt to last, and all installed parts and workmanship carry the standard GIW warranty. The REGEN Service Centers are certified to ISO 9002.

About GIW Industries
GIW Industries began as a small foundry and machine shop in Augusta, Ga., in 1891. In 1914, GIW began building slurry pumps. Today, the company comprises two manufacturing facilities, one in Grovetown, Ga., and the other in Thomson, Ga. These foundries and machine shops are used for manufacturing and assembling pumps and for casting a variety of abrasion-resistant alloys and urethane elastomers. As a subsidiary of KSB AG of Germany, a global pump and valve manufacturer, GIW has the infrastructure to supply pumps worldwide. KSB has presence in 100 countries with sales organizations, offices, and 30 manufacturing sites.