OREANDA-NEWS. On 21 April 2008 was announced, that this week MMK was visited by delegations of SMS Demag, Germany, and WISDRI, China . The highlight of the meeting was the current status of the 5,000 mm Plate Mill.

In the morning the guests, accompanied by MMK’s Director for Construction Valentin Antoniuk, visited the site of the future mill and witnessed the activities of over a thousand construction men working there who have by now completed 95% of all foundation work and mounted 19,000 tons of steel structures out of a total of 32,000 tons. Roofing work has started.

“Each visit here brings new experience. The scale of the project is immense”, said Dieter Rosenthal, Vice President of SMS Demag. “Today we have seen a serious progress in the mounting of steel structures. What has already been done is very impressive. But we have still a long way to go before this ambitious project materializes.”

In the afternoon the conference hall of the MMK’s administration building became the venue of the first meeting of the Steering Committee whose function is to oversee the progress of the contracts for the construction of the Plate Mill. The meeting was attended by Guennadi Senichev, Vice President of the MMK Managing Company for Operations, Vladimir Shmakov, Vice President of the MMK Managing Company for Finance and Economics, and the Company’s Chief Rolling Engineer Alexander Titov. The meeting discussed general issues related to the progress of the design engineering, time frame for the start of equipment installation, and the overall schedule of the project’s completion.

The contract for the delivery of equipment for the 5,000 mm Plate Mill was signed with SMS Demag in November of 2006, with the commissioning scheduled for mid-2009. The Chinese company WISDRI is in charge of the project’s part related to water treatment and electric power supply.