Leading steel company INTERPIPE signed a major new contract with Danieli, Italy, to build a state-of-the-art electric steelmaking facility. When completed, it will be the largest facility of its kind in the Ukraine and in Western Europe.

Representing an investment in excess of $610 million, the new facility will be capable of producing 1.32 million tonnes of round billets and blooms per annum, providing INTERPIPE’s manufacturing mills with high-quality steel for the company to produce pipes and wheels.

The new Meltshop will comprise a split-shell FastArc AC EAF, a 160-ton twin-shell, inert roof-type ladle furnace (LF), and a double-tank vacuum degasser (VD) equipped with a four-stage 400kg/hour steam ejector vacuum pump. The EAF will operate based on 100% scrap and will be equipped with the latest technology in chemical energy injection and HiReg electrode digital regulation system, for enhanced furnace operation and optimization of energy consumption.

The meltshop will also include a four-strand FastCast bloom caster and a five-strand billet caster, both equipped with the latest generation of tundish and mould design, hydraulic oscillators and all means to enable high-speed casting of 150- to 470-mm quality round billets and blooms.

Danieli’s scope of supply will include all auxiliary plants and equipment, including the material handling system, fume dedusting plant and cranes. Danieli Automation will supply all electrical systems and advanced, fully integrated automation system for the entire plant, including Level 3 for Planning, Production Progress Control and Quality Management, Scheduling, Data Warehouse and Stokyard Management.

The new mill will be located within the grounds of the company’s largest existing mill in Dnepropetrovsk, the Niznedneprovsky Tube Rolling Plant (NTRP). Construction will start in three to five months.

“This electric steelmaking facility will provide the company with its own resource base, as well as enhance quality control at each stage of the production chain,” commented Alexandr Kirichko, Managing Director at INTERPIPE. “This cutting-edge facility will allow considerable reductions in gas consumption (8 times less than the current rate) and overall emissions (2.5 times less). This project will also create 500 new jobs for the local community. Most importantly, however, we will be in a position to provide our customers around the world with better products more efficiently.”

“Danieli will be managing the construction as a turnkey project,” said Gianpetro Benedetti, Chairman and CEO of Danieli, “including all the technological production, the auxiliary plants and services, along with the all of the infrastructure, civil works and support buildings. This facility will be the first of its kind in the Ukraine, which is very exciting for both Danieli and INTERPIPE.”

“The future of Ukrainian industry is not just about modernizing existing mills and factories—many of which were built over 50 to 100 years ago—we also need to invest in new, high technology manufacturing facilities,” commented Viktor Pinchuk, Founder of Interpipe. “Through working with partners like Danieli on projects such as this, I am very pleased to see that we are making a significant step forward in the building of a modern industrial infrastructure for Ukraine in the 21st century.”

INTERPIPE is a global producer of steel pipes and wheels, one of the fastest growing producers in Eastern and Central Europe. INTERPIPE produces 4.3% of the world’s seamless pipes and 12.8% of the world’s railway wheels. The company employs 16,000 people at four high-quality production mills (the four largest tubular mills in Ukraine): Interpipe NTRP, Interpipe Niko Tube, Interpipe NTK, Interpipe NMPP. These four facilities produce more than 1.4 million tons of steel products annually. INTERPIPE has a rapidly growing global business in 76 countries around the world.

DANIELI designs, manufactures and installs competitive plants and equipment for the steel and industry worldwide. The company employs over 5,000 people operating in 18 product lines. The main products of the company include minimills, integrated steelmaking plants, direct reduction plants, electric steel meltshops, continuous casting plants and rolling mills for long and flat products, strip processing lines, tube processing plants, forging shops, conditioning lines, cold drawing lines, extrusion plants, automation and process control systems, technical assistance and spare parts.