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Essar Steel Becomes Extra-Wide Plate Manufacturer
05/23/2013 - Essar Steel has joined the ranks of international steel producers who manufacture extra wide plates.
The demand for thicker, wider and ultra-high strength steel plates has been increasing due to rapid industrialization across the world. Key industry players across different segments in India agree that the availability of thicker and wider width plates will result in enormous savings on fabrication and welding, and also lead to an improvement in yield, quality and durability.
Essar Steel has joined the ranks of international steel producers who manufacture extra wide plates. The 4 hi rolling mill has a roll separating force of 10,000 tonnes and can produce plates with a width of up to 5 meters. Other facilities include normalizing, accelerated cooling/direct quenching, hot and cold-leveling and quenching and tempering.
The plates well received in the market both domestically and internationally. This achievement is the significant milestone for Essar Steel as it marks the beginning of its journey to become a leading supplier of plates covering all segments for various applications such as construction, engineering equipment, yellow goods, large diameter pipes for oil and gas, shipbuilding, pressure vessels, etc. with value added products.
Alok Gupta, president, sales & marketing, Essar Steel India said, “We do not stop with supplying quality plates meeting the needs of our customers. We build trust and bond through customized solutions to meet the needs of customers to create value. We also have an application engineering experts to understand customers’ needs to provide custom made solutions.”
The demand for high-strength, extra wide plates is growing in the country due to the changing market needs brought about by an increased usage of sophisticated technology in various user industries.
Salient feature of the plant
Set up at a cost of approx. Rs. 2000 crore, the plant has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes and has capability to produce up to 5 meter wide steel plates. It has been set up with the best in class technology from VAI-Siemens. Essar Steel is known for its innovation and has been setting new bench marks in developing new steel products. These plates will also conform to all relevant national and international specifications.
Essar’s ultra-modern mill with level-II automation system and flatness and profile control models are equipped with heat treatment (normalizing and quenching) facilities. It is also equipped with online full body ultra-sonic testing and shot-blasting and painting facilities. The mill has latest technologies for thermo-mechanical controlled rolling (TMCR) to achieve specific reduction by controlling the temperature during rolling, plan view rolling (PVR) to improve the plates’ rectangularity
Salient features of extra wide plates
Plate products have got wide range of dimensions from 5-mm to 150-mm in thickness, 900-to 4900-mm in width and 3-meter to 25-meter in length. Plate supply range covers all segments catering various industries such as manufacturing of large diameter pipes, engineering equipment, ship building, boiler manufacturing, construction etc. All these will be conforming to various specifications. This will substitute the products that were previously imported.
Accelerated direct cooling operations (ADCO) to provide a highly controllable, accurate and accelerated cooling capability that will ensure homogeneous cooling over the entire plate width, edge masking to get a homogeneous temperature pattern over the width of the plate. This avoids overcooling and under cooling of plate edges
Essar has now become the country’s only steel plant with integrated facilities from heavy plates, hot rolling, cold rolling, galvanizing and color coating, with a full distribution business with Service Centre and Steel Hypermarts
World class quality control
The plate Mill is supported by world class testing facility with on line inspections system such as full body Ultrasonic testing, under surface inspection and a full-fledged NACE lab. The mill has highest level of automation for process control, plate tracking, marking & stenciling etc.
The plant is well connected by rail, road and sea. Recently, the port capacity has been expanded to allow large vessels to be berthed alongside the port. This will ensure timely delivery of product to the customers.
