East Tamaki Warehouse
Laser Cleaning and Re-Coating

At a fabricator’s warehouse in East Tamaki, Auckland, corrosion needed to be stopped on the structural steel, but the operation running on the warehouse floor beneath the work area could not be paused to accommodate the repair. Any method that relied on extensive masking, wet processes or an extended shutdown risked interrupting the business below, so the corrosion had to be dealt with in a way that fitted around continuing operations rather than stopping them.

BlastOff used industrial laser cleaning to precisely target the corroded areas of the steel, without abrasive media, water or chemical strippers that would have called for wider containment across the floor below. That allowed the work to proceed above the active warehouse with minimal masking and limited downtime for the operation underneath. Fresh protective coatings were applied immediately after cleaning, sealing the steel before flash rust could develop on the newly exposed metal.

Corrosion on the East Tamaki steel was arrested and the protective coating renewed, with the business continuing to run underneath the work throughout.

For warehouse and fabrication site owners facing similar corrosion overhead, the lesson worth taking is that the treatment method needs to be chosen around what the floor below can tolerate, not just what removes rust fastest. Where a full shutdown isn’t an option, a precise, low-mess process paired with prompt recoating keeps the corrosion from returning while the rest of the operation carries on as normal, which is worth factoring into any scoping conversation before work begins. Overhead steelwork above a live floor also raises practical questions around what falls during the work, so masking and clean-up need to be planned around the operation below rather than treated as an afterthought. Fabricators and warehouse owners with similar corrosion above an active floor should ask what containment is realistically achievable without stopping work, and how soon the exposed steel can be coated once cleaned.