Tallest paper tower in the world created

Teamwork between two Wedge Group galvanising plants — BE Wedge at Willenhall and East Anglian Galvanizing, near Peterborough — has helped to create the tallest paper tower in the world. The 22m-high structure is made from cardboard tubes linked by galvanised steel joints and was a major attraction at last autumn’s 2009 London Design Festival. The ‘Paper Tower’ formed a dramatic, cone-shaped centrepiece for the annual design festival in front of the Royal Festival Hall on the capital’s South Bank. The ‘Paper Tower’ was sponsored by Sonoco, a global supplier of industrial and consumer packaging. In total, over 850 individual components, weighing approximately 3.3 tonnes, were spin-galvanised at BE Wedge.

Sales manager Lee Dickens said: “As specialists in spin-galvanising, we carried out the galvanising for our colleagues at East Anglian on this occasion. Spin-galvanising was felt to be the best process for this project, because of the large number of small parts and because spin-galvanising is able to remove more of the excess zinc and produce a very smooth finish.”