Alloy is widely used in the various industries, such as garment and metallurgy. For the garments, they will be used to make metal labels to be attached on the clothes. Modern development started during the 1980s with the first alkaline. Recently, the reinforcement of the corrosion specifications of major European car makers and the End of Life Vehicles Directive required greater use of alkaline Zn/Ni containing between 12 and 15% Ni. Only Zn/Ni is an alloy while lower content of iron, cobalt and nickel leads to co-deposits. Zn/Ni in nickel in acidic and alkaline electrolytes is plated as the gamma crystalline phase of the binary diagram Zn-Ni.

The corrosion protection is primarily due to the anodic potential dissolution of zinc versus iron. Zinc acts as a sacrificial anode for protecting ironmetal labels. While steel is close to -400 mV, depending on alloy composition, electroplated zinc is much more anodic with -980 mV. Steel is preserved from corrosion by cathodic protection. Alloying zinc with cobalt or nickel at levels less than 1% has minimal effect on the potential; but both alloys improve the capacity of the zinc layer to develop a chromate film by conversion coating. This further enhances corrosion protection.

During corrosion, the attack of zinc is preferred and the dezincification leads to a consistent increase of the potential towards steel. Thanks to this mechanism of corrosion, this alloy offers much greater protection than other metal labels. For cost reasons, the existing market is divided between alkaline and other materials, the cost are very different depending on the chemistry property. The use of former alkaline and acidic Zn/Co is disappearing from the specifications because Fe gives similar results with less environmental concern. This initial layer prevents hydrogen from penetrating deep into the steel substrate, thus avoiding the serious problems associated with hydrogen.