According to Alexey Mordashov, the general director of Severstal-group and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Severstal, the decision to build the continuous casting device (CCD) is linked with Severstal's plans to increase sales of section steel to automotive, steel-rolling and bearing making companies and expand the geographic scope of export sales.
   The continuous casting device was designed by Techint company and the Severstal's Engineering Center. The device was built and assembled, set up and cold tested simultaneously. This allowed to implement the project in 6.5 months. Projects with similar amounts of iron and concrete items, metal constructions and equipment are usually built in 1.5 years.
   The continuous casting unit cost US $ 40 million. The project should pay back in 1.5-2 years. About 75% of equipment, excluding the device itself, was built by Russian companies, mainly by the Machine Building Center of Severstal (which has become Severstal-Tyazhmash - a Severstal subsidiary in July).
   All jobs of constructing the foundation and assembling of the new CCD were done while non-stop operation of the shop. The device will begin operating at it projected capacity in November 2002. The six brook device built with high degree automation combines the optimum speed of casting with the quality of end product and meets the highest world standards.
   With the help of the CCD the electric arc furnace shop will produce billets of square shape, which will go straight to the section rolling shop. The new technology will allow to completely close the blast furnace shop and bypass the blooming process, thus significantly decreasing the cost price of end product. A billet is the end product of the CCD, which is further processed in the section rolling shop to make products for machine building and construction.
   "Finishing up the construction of the CCD is in line with Severstal's strategy aimed at ceasing casting of steel into ingots," said Anatoly Kruchinin, Severstal's general director. In the new continuos casting process the quality of metal goes up and its consumption in the production of rolled products goes down. The expected increase in efficiency (measured as an increase in product quality and decrease in its consumption) is 23%.
   According to Kruchinin, the team of employees, which will service the new device, has been formed and trained. "The training involved employees of the electric arc furnace shop and other units. 95 employees received preliminary training at the similar devices at plants, located in the former CIS countries, while 80 employees were provided with the basics of theory of continuous casting in Italy and obtained hands on experience of operating such devices in China and Germany."