Ispat Sidex, Romania, recently awarded VAI Fuchs with a contract for two new 180-tonne ladle furnaces.

The company had previously contracted VAI to modify its ladle turret, increase tundish capacity from 18 to 40 tonnes, and renew the complete strand guiding system. In the 2003 project, VAI replaced the caster’s existing curved mold with a straight mold, added a Dynaflex hydraulic oscillator, and added an ASTC/SMART^® system for automatic casting thickness adjustment and dynamic soft reduction.

VAI Fuchs is a technological leader in the field of electric steelmaking and is a supplier for electric arc furnaces, secondary metallurgy equipment and all its auxiliary equipment. The VAI Fuchs Group employs 350 people worldwide.

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 3,400 people worldwide.