South Steel commissions minimill

South Steel in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, has commissioned a minimill from SMS Meer and SMS Concast. The steelworks produces up to 1 million t of billets per year, the rolling mill up to 500,000 t of rebar. The plant satisfies high demands on efficiency, flexibility and productivity.

Continuous caster produces 1 million t of billets

The electric arc furnace from SMS Concast is equipped with eccen- tric bottom tapping (EBT) and a full platform and is designed for 24 charges per day. The ladle furnace is used for the secondary metal- lurgy. 80 percent HBI (hot-briquetted iron) and 20 percent scrap are used as raw material, but the furnace can also process up to 100 percent HBI.

The electrode control and process automation of the steelworks meet very high demands, allowing a homogeneous process with considerable flexibility and high productivity.

The continuous caster has five strands and can produce 1 million t of billets in the formats 130 mm square and 150 mm square.

Half of the cast billets are sold on the regional market, the other half is further processed while still hot in the rebar mill.
 

Highly productive for small dimensions

The rolling mill from SMS Meer is equipped with a walking-beam furnace with several control zones: The ratio of fuel to air is moni- tored separately in each zone, enabling the fuel consumption to be significantly reduced. The furnace can be operated flexibly, irrespective of the production volume.

The fully automated rolling mill consists of 16 housingless stands followed downline by a finishing block with six stands. The compact design of the HL (HousingLess) roll stands and the employment of a finishing block ensure compliance with close tolerances. Thanks to the HSD® (High-Speed Delivery) system, final rolling speeds onto the cooling bed of up to 41 m/s are possible. The plant can therefore reach a high production rate per hour even for small dimensions.

“We are very pleased about the successful cooperation with our customer,” says Stefan Rutishauser from SMS Concast. “Thanks to the high capacity of the components, the performance and produc- tivity of the minimill is impressive, exactly as South Steel had expected it to be.”

The South Steel minimill is regarded as a major milestone in setting up a steel cluster. "Jizan Economic City" is one of six newly constructed cities with which the Kingdom aims to make the Saudi economy less dependent on the export of crude oil by 2030.

SMS Meer GmbH is a company of the SMS group which, under the roof of the SMS Holding GmbH, consists of a group of global players in machinery and plant construction in steel and nonferrous metals processing. Its workforce of more than 13,500 employees generates sales worldwide totaling EUR 3.3 billion.

SMS Siemag