OREANDA-NEWS. The Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) has signed a contract for the delivery of equipment for the new cold rolling complex.

The necessity of commissioning new facilities for pickling, rolling, continuous annealing and finishing of cold rolled products has been prompted by increased demand for premium quality cold rolled steel, especially, auto body sheet. Thus, the new complex, using leading edge technologies and processes, will produce top quality cold rolled and galvanized steel for the manufacture of exterior and interior automobile parts, white goods and for the construction sector.

The equipment of the new cold rolling shop (LPZ-11) will include a continuous hydrochloric acid turbulent pickling line in combination with a 5-stand tandem cold rolling mill designed to produce 2.1 million tons per year, a 450 ktpy continuous hot dip galvanizing line, a 650 ktpy combined continuous annealing and hot dip galvanizing line, a rolls grinding and texturing shop, a strip inspection and slitting line, packing lines for full hard and galvanized coils. The product range will comprise cold rolled coils weighing up to 43.5 metric tons, 0.28 - 3.00 mm thick and 850-1,880 mm wide.

The implementation of the project will take 36 months, meaning that in July of 2010 the new shop is scheduled to go on stream. The project will allow to raise the share of cold rolled and galvanized steel in the total output of MMK, broaden the range of steel grades produced, and supply premium quality cold rolled and galvanized sheet to automakers, including HSLA, IF-HSS, BH, DP, MP and TRIP steels meeting the most stringent requirements for this kind of products.

The same kind of material having the required drawing quality and free of any surface defects, will be supplied to manufacturers of white goods. The new shop will also provide cold rolled full hard material for the galvanizing lines to be installed in the MMK-Atakas JV in Turkey.

The contract for the supply of equipment has been awarded to SMS Damage.