OREANDA-NEWS. September 10, 2009. Belarusian Steel Works (BMZ) plans to finish upgrading its continuous casting machine No 3 by the end of the year, representatives of the company’s technical department said.

It is the largest investment project in the last two years. BMZ is implementing it together with the Italian company Danieli, which specializes in manufacturing and commissioning competitive metallurgical equipment. The Italian company signed the contract to supply equipment, provide engineering and modernization services in June 2007.

The project for modernizing continuous casting machine No 3 is one of the steps in BMZ’s full-scale remodeling programme that was launched several years ago. The installation of better equipment (roughly 90% of the company equipment has to be replaced) will allow increasing the caster’s output capacity up to 1 million tonnes of steel per annum. Once fully operational, the installation’s energy consumption per 1 tonne of steel will be reduced by 7.3% on the average.

Apart from that, the modernized caster will be able to manufacture high-quality round billets 200 mm in diameter that will be used to make seamless hot-rolled pipes.

The installation of the new equipment is supposed to be finished within the next two months. After that the continuous casting machine will undergo a cold run test to be later switched to the normal operating conditions.