NLMK Steel resumed upgrading activities at Continuous Reheating Furnace No.3 used for bringing billets to forging temperature before hot-rolling.  The capacity of the furnace is 320 ton of slab per hour. The project was launched in 2007 but had to be suspended due to the crisis.

The unique design of the new furnace being constructed to replace the old one will ensure highly uniform slab heating and very accurate strip parameters on further rolling. Cutting-edge resource-efficiency and ecologically friendly technologies will allow to cut energy consumption by 50% and reduce NO and CO emissions by 27%.

Foundation works have already been completed. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the Belgium CMI as part of the second stage of NLMK’s Technical Upgrade Program. Its total value exceeds RUR 2 billion.

The new furnace will be commissioned in 2011 increasing NLMK’s hot-rolling capacities by 200,000 tpy of a wide variety of steel grades.

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Continuous Reheating Furnace No.3 will be the third unit of its kind to be upgraded at NLMK’s main production site in Lipetsk (Furnace No.5 was commissioned in 2004, Furnace No.4 in 2007). Key hot-rolled sheet and coil consumers include such industries as construction, shipbuilding, automotive and pipe production, as well as NLMK’s own cold-rolling facilities, including our transformer steel plant in Yekaterinburg.