According to the contractor, Paul Wurth, the new furnace has a hearth diameter of 12.0 m, an inner volume of 3,818 m³, 32 tuyeres and four tapholes. It is designed to produce a nominal 3.4 million tons of hot metal per year.

Paul Wurth supplied the furnace shell; the hearth lining and all of the other refractories; the cooling system, which includes copper and cast iron staves, copper cooling boxes, tuyeres and tuyere coolers and cooling water pumphouse; low-energy tuyere stocks; and a new bustle pipe.

The company also replaced the Bell Less Top, which been operating since 1978, with a new, state-of-the-art parallel hopper system.

In addition to supplying the equipment and engineering, Paul Wurth also provided the process technology for operating the furnace.

“Under this contract, Paul Wurth first had to adapt the earlier delivered basic engineering to the final main technical solutions chosen together with the customer. Further on, the company was in charge of the overall engineering, which has been executed in close collaboration with local design specialist NLMK Engineering,” Paul Wurth said.

NLMK announced the project last year, saying that it would lift the furnace's capacity by 8%, significantly improve its environmental performance, and extend its interrepair cycle by 50% to 25 years.