Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau (VAI) has logged new orders from Asia, Russia and Western Europe with a total value of around EUR 100 million, raising company order intake at the end of November 2004 by more than 50% compared to the same period of last year.

VAI’s VAI UK subsidiary, VAI UK, has received an order from China Steel for a hot dip zinc coating plant with an order value of around EUR 21 m. In addition, the company has also landed an order for an aluminum rolling mill from the Thai company, Varopakorn, worth over EUR 4.2 million.

VAI-Pomini, an Italian VAI subsidiary specializing in technologies for the production and processing of rolled long products, has received an order valued at more than EUR 15 million from Changwon, South Korea, for modernization of a long products rolling mill. In addition, Jinxi, a Chinese steel producer from the province of Hebei, has commissioned VAI Linz with the supply of a continuous casting plant worth EUR 6.9 million.

In all, VAI has been awarded orders worth over EUR 400 million in the Chinese market since the beginning of 2004. The European domestic market remained stable and contributed a further EUR 20 m to this positive development, which derived mainly from the Arcelor Group.

A leading Russian steel producer, the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), has allocated VAI an order for the sinter stabilization complex in Magnitogorsk worth around EUR 30 million. As a result, the value of orders received by VAI from the CIS during the current year is already above the EUR 200 million mark.

Due to the extremely positive developments in the iron and steel industry, VAI order intake for the period from January to September 2004 exceeded that for the whole of 2003. A record order intake increase of 73% (to EUR 1,348 million) raised order backlog to an all-time high of EUR 1,667 million (62% above the first nine months of 2003), which secures use of capacity for around the next 18 months.

Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau (VAI), a company of the listed VA Technologie AG, is one of the world’s leading engineering and plant-building companies for the iron, steel and aluminum industries with a multinational company structure and special focus on technology, automation and services. VAI achieved total sales of 976 million EUR in 2003 and employs approximately 3400 people worldwide.