Parker and Sandvik offer packaged fittings and tubing

This agreement brings together two of the world's best-known players in the fluid instrumentation market. In addition to simplifying purchasing, the sheer volume of Parker's business means that it has been able to secure Sandvik tubing at highly competitive rates.

A further advantage of the new service relates to the underlying product quality control. In today's cost-conscious climate, users may be tempted by vendors that focus purely on lowest price and may run the risk of compromising quality. Choosing Parker/Sandvik packages ensures customer benefit from an all-embracing quality system that is not only cost-competitive but also ensures fluid instrumentation tubing components have genuine integrity and perform to specification - which is vital for plants processing harsh media or operating in corrosive environments.

This quality control begins with an audit trail for the raw materials. Sandvik melts its own steel to ensure quality control from this point right through to the finished product. Such a level of attention to detail extends throughout the design and manufacturing chain up to and including verification of performance by independent third-party test houses.

Quality and cost-competitiveness

Parker Hannifin's Sheldon Banks says: "Tube quality is critical for the correct performance of our product. Our aim is to provide a high-integrity connection every time with our range of connectors - anywhere in the world. Working with Sandvik allows our customers to benefit from a level of quality and total cost-competitiveness that we feel gives us the edge."

Peter Rose of Sandvik Materials Technology adds: "We believe that this supply initiative demonstrates what can be achieved when like-minded organisations work together to maximise the potential for their products. We are reserving mill capacity in order to meet the expected demand that this agreement will bring."

Parker Hannifin's alliance with Sandvik covers seamless instrumentation tubing in 316/316L stainless steel, plus a range of the most commonly used exotic alloys including 304/304L, 6Mo, 321, SAF 2507, 625, 825 and Hastelloy C276.

In addition to serving the mainstream market for stainless steel tubing, Sandvik is well known as a pioneer of engineered materials for dealing with the exceptionally harsh pressure and corrosion-prone conditions faced by users in the offshore oil and gas industry.

Parker Hannifin itself is renowned for its tube fitting range, and has earned a reputation worldwide over many decades for reliability and innovation. Its range of threadless tube fittings includes not only 'industry standard' twin-ferrule compression types - which feature the corrosion-resistant Suparcase ferrule technology - but three further fitting innovations to allow users to make tubing connections faster, smarter, cleaner and safer.

The company's latest innovation, Phastite, delivers user-friendly compression-style assembly to high-pressure connections up to 20,000psi - providing a cost-saving alternative to welded and cone-and-thread connections.