Employees of a Newcastle steel company have made it into the Guinness Book of Records with a 2km long braaied sosatie.

The ArcelorMittal Newcastle Works staffers made the 2047.47m long sosatie by dividing it into 50 metre lengths with each section manned by 11 sosatie assemblers, publicist Paula Marais said.

They threaded 3100kg of beef, 3600 onions, 24 500 dried peaches and 4500 green peppers on the metal lengths and these were then joined up and cooked over 15 000kg of charcoal smouldering in specially dug trenches on the company's property.

The idea was the brainchild of the company's human resources manager Hannes Liebenberg, who had spent years pondering the perfect design for the couplings between sosatie sections, said Marais.

The attempt was to have taken place last Friday but the first heavy summer rains and golf-ball sized hailstones put a damper on that. So the next day they had to race around Newcastle looking for more charcoal and try again.

They succeeded on Saturday and after the Guinness representative had confirmed that the record exceeded the previous record of 1554m, large portions of the food were donated to the area's charities.

Sapa