Building on its record year 2004, VAI has continued its successful business development at the beginning of 2005. As Gerhard Falch, Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau GmbH Chairman and Vice-Chairman of VA Technologie AG explains, “Due to the taking effect of the major orders from Hadeed worth around EUR 340 million, negotiated and agreed upon in October 2004, and other contracts worth more than EUR 160 million from Saudi Arabia, the CIS, China, Iran, Poland and Turkey, VAI can already point to an order intake in January 2005 of over EUR 500 million.”

In addition to major orders for the world’s largest direct reduction plant and enlargement of its electric steelmaking plant, Hadeed has allocated VAI a further order worth around EUR 13 million for modifications to the hot dip galvanizing plant at Al-Jubail, which was originally supplied by VAI in 1998.

In the CIS, VAI has secured orders with a total value of around EUR 60 million. These include contracts for a continuous caster for Alchevsk and a ladle furnace for Azovstal.

Orders for a dry dedusting system for the Chinese steel producer, Baosteel, an electric steelmaking plant for the Turkish steel company Colakoglu and a strip coating plant for the Huta Florian in Poland represent further items on the list of current order book.

Iranian steel producer Vian Steel has commissioned VAI Pomini, an Italian VAI subsidiary specializing in technologies for the production and processing of long products, with the supply of an electric steelmaking plant and a billet caster worth over EUR 50 million for its plant in the province of Hamadan. As a result of its planned steel production expansion, Iran remains an interesting market for VAI.

As a consequence of the steady increase in order intake, which in 2004 reached an all-time high of EUR 1.62 billion, the VAI order backlog has also risen in January 2005 to a record value of over EUR 2 billion. Gerhard Falch comments, “This order backlog means that the use of capacity within the VAI Group is secured for the next two years. The probity of our choice of strategy as a life cycle partner for the iron, steel and aluminum industry is further underlined by the continuing positive developments in the areas of automation and metallurgical services.

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.