OREANDA-NEWS. November 26, 2007.  Volgograd Small Diameter Pipe Plant  launched a mill for production of round and shaped pipes from c/r and stainless steel.

As Andrey Saltanov, senior vice president of Group of companies ESTAR, announced on Friday at a press conference in Volgograd, the pipe welding mill products targeted consumers from construction, electric engineering and furniture industries.

The mill’s capacity will be about 10,000 t of pipes per year with a diameter of 10-63,5 mm and pipes with a cross-section of 15х15 to 50х50 mm (square pipes) and from 20х10 to 60х40 mm (rectangular pipes).

A.Saltanov didn’t disclose the amount of project investments but noted that the equipment, previously used by a plant in Italy, “is in a good technical condition and we managed to purchase it quite cheap and implement the project in the shortest possible period – in 6 months”.

According to him, the question of the time of launching of a new production line was an essential one given the growing competition. “If we had ordered new equipment, we would have had to wait at least a year for it to be manufactured, and that also requires big investments”, said the senior vice president, noting that this investment project can pay back in less than a year.

In his words, optimistic forecasts of the payback period are based on a favourable market situation. “Consumption of stainless pipes in Russia amounted to 58,000 t, among them only 20,000 t were produced in Russia and the rest was imported, by the results of the year 2006. We intend to take the market share of 8,000 t of stainless pipes. This amount of decorative pipes was imported in Russia from Italy in the course of 2006. If we start producing 600 t of stainless pipes per month, we’ll manage to squeeze the Italian-produced pipes out of our market”, noted Saltanov. 

Besides, this production will allow attracting orders for a few other plants of the ESTAR Group of companies. Particularly, for the Novosibirsk Plant named after Kuzmin that produces h/r and c/r stainless sheets and Zlatoust Metallurgical Plant that produces slabs for the stainless sheets production.

The next stage in the Volgograd plant reconstruction is the launch of a new production line of thin-wall refrigerator pipe produced by Marcegaglia, Italy. The launch of the high technology refrigeration pipe production in the first quarter of 2008 will allow increasing the production of refrigeration pipe by 400 t per month. The investments will amount to 4.5 mln euros.