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ThyssenKrupp Celebrates Arrival of First Brazil Slabs at Duisburg
10/28/2010 - ThyssenKrupp celebrates the arrival of its first shipment of steel slabs from the new ThyssenKrupp CSA Siderúrgica do Atlântico mill in Brazil. Once it reaches full production, the Brazil plant will ship three million tons of its capacity to the plant currently under construction in Alabama, while two million tons will be shipped to ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe’s plants in Germany.
ThyssenKrupp celebrated this week the arrival of its first shipment of 10,000 tons of steel slabs from the new ThyssenKrupp CSA Siderúrgica do Atlântico mill in Brazil. The slabs were transshipped at Europoort Rotterdam then transported by barge trains up the Rhine to Duisburg.
ThyssenKrupp’s new integrated mill in Santa Cruz, Brazil, began producing slabs in early September. The mill – Brazil’s biggest industrial investment in the past ten years -- is the first major steel mill to be built in the country since the mid-eighties. “The investment project is of central importance to ThyssenKrupp’s growth strategy for premium carbon steel flat products in Europe and North America,” said ThyssenKrupp CEO Dr. Ekkehard Schulz.
At present, the first of two production lines is in operation with one blast furnace and one converter. After full ramp-up, which is scheduled for at the end of fiscal 2011/2012, the mill will produce a total of five million tonnes of high-quality, low-cost slabs annually. Three million tons of the mill’s total capacity will go to the ThyssenKrupp processing plant currently under construction in Alabama, while two million tons will be shipped to ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe’s plants in Germany.
As part of its growth strategy ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe has already invested around 208 million euros in Germany (in addition to its normal investment programs) to facilitate processing additional slab quantities.
“With our investment projects in Brazil and Germany we are supporting the strategic growth of our customers,” explains Edwin Eichler, CEO of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG.
In the past four years, the company has invested around 125 million euros to increase the capacity of the Duisburg-Beeckerwerth and Bochum hot strip mills. At Beeckerwerth, the coil yard has been expanded, the drive power of the finishing train stands increased and the performance of the cooling zone improved. At the Bochum hot strip mill, the company built and put into operation a new walking beam furnace. The company also revamped its hot dip coating lines at a cost of around 30 million euros, incorporatng such features as optimization of furnace heating capacities, the addition of new zinc pots, and installation of a new laser welding line. In addition, the slab logistics infrastructure has been upgraded to meet the new requirements.
Upon arrival at the Rotterdam Europoort deep sea terminal, the 396 slabs from Brazil were unloaded by four magnet cranes then were then transported by ThyssenKrupp Veerhaven B.V. on barges up the Rhine to Walsum port in Duisburg. At Duisburg, the slabs are unloaded and handled without being touched by human hand using a state-of-the-art, 530-tonne bridge crane with permanent magnets capable of moving loads of up to 36 tons. Advantages of the newly developed lifting technology include increased employee safety and greater ease of handling, as the magnets hold on to the slabs until an electrical impulse interrupts the contact. The state-of-the-art magnet technology also shortens unloading times significantly and eliminates the need for chains, thus helping to saves large amounts of wooden dunnage.
The unloaded slabs are deposited on roller pallets for internal yard handling. They are then moved by powerful tractor trucks then stored in a yard newly built for this purpose in Walsum port. ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe’s hot strip mills then order the slabs from the yard as required and process them into hot-rolled coil.
A sophisticated franking system using a memory chip ensures that each slab can be identified digitally, without line of sight or contact and over large distances, and the data can be processed directly in connected computer systems. Immediately after production in Brazil the slabs are tagged with an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip that permits fully automatic handling on every part of the route. The chip contains essential information about the individual slab, allowing it to be identified, stored, transported and finally processed as planned all the way from Brazil via the Netherlands to Germany.
