The process of coating ferrous materials with zinc based alloys is widely used to protect from corrosion and to give better surface characteristics on the steel products.

Galvanized coating gives corrosion protection for steel in two ways:

1-Barrier protection that protect the steel from the enviroment in which the coating acts as a shield

2-Galvanic protection that protect also exposed (sheared) edges by zinc anodic sacrification

There are many applications of this principle that are industrially applicated.

The differences between each application are mainly based on these points:

In the continuous coating a strip is coated on his surfaces while running at constant speed in a process line; coils are uncoiled, coated, recoiled and are joined together by welding head to tail to permit a continuous operation.

Batch coatings utilize as base material metallic parts that have been already fabricated. This process is not a continuous process in that the parts are immersed in a discrete batch into the zinc bath. Thus the process is called "batch" or "after fabrication" or "general" galvanizing. Parts as small as fasteners to as large as bridge structural girders can be galvanized by the batch process.

The aim of this report is to focalize on continuous galvanized products and market applications.

The reason is that batch coating is normally made from little producers, so the fragmentation of the market is far higher and it is difficult to analize.

In addiction the continuous coating process has been developed in last years and it has increased its technological content and variety of products and therefore can be considered interesting from a market point of view.