Displaying items by tag: India

Luxembourg: ArcelorMittal’s sales fell by 2% year-on-year to US$38.5bn in the first half of 2019 from US$39.2bn in the same period in 2019. Its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 43% to US$3.21bn from US$5.59bn. Crude steel production volumes rose by 3% to 47.8Mt from 46.5Mt.

"After a strong 2018, market conditions in the first half of 2019 have been very tough, with the profitability of our steel segments suffering due to lower steel prices combined with higher raw material costs,” said Lakshmi N Mittal, ArcelorMittal’s chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). He added that the company had recued its production capacity in Europe in responses to global overcapacity.

World: Crude steel production grew by 4.9% year-on-year to 925Mt in the first half of 2019 from 882Mt in the same period in 2018. Data from the World Steel Association shows production increased in Asia and North American, remained stable in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region but that it fell in the European Union. Of the larger individual steel producing countries gains were reported in China, India and South Korea, but declines were noted in Germany and Japan.

India: The Bureau of Indian Standards' Hyderabad branch office has granted a licence for a slag cement product made by UltraTech Cement. The ground granulated blast furnace slag product is for use for use in cement, mortar and concrete according to Indian Standard IS 16714:2018, according to the Press Trust of India.

UK: Henrik Adam has been appointed as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Tata Steel Europe. He succeeds Hans Fischer, who has decided to step down from the post. Fischer will continue as a non-executive director and will continue to advise TV Narendran, CEO and managing director of Tata Steel. Adam will also join the board of Tata Steel Europe and report to TV Narendran.

Adam joined Tata Steel Europe in 2011 as Chief Commercial Officer. Prior to this he held a wide range of roles at ThyssenKrupp including CEO of ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel. He has also been a director of EEF (now called Make UK), the UK’s manufacturers’ organisation, and chairman of WorldAutoSteel, the automotive group of the World Steel Association. Born in Essen Germany, Adam is a mechanical engineer who started his career as a scientist in vehicle safety technologies.

India: JSW Cement has launched its ‘Comp Cem’ product in Goa. It is a blend of clinker, ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash, according to the United News Of India. The new product is intended to help the cement producer expand its distribution network in the southern and western parts of the country.

India: JSW Cement plans to increase the production capacity to 3.6Mt/yr at its Salboni grinding plant in West Bengal. The unit has a capacity of 2.4Mt/yr at present, according to the Economic Times newspaper. The cement producer plans to strengthen its presence in eastern India starting with West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand. The plant manufactures Portland Slag Cement and it hopes to tap into local demand for this product with the upgrade.

World: Global steel production rose by 4.6% year-on-year to 1.81Bnt in 2018 from 1.73Bnt in 2017. Data from the World Steel Association shows that production rose fastest in the Middle East, Africa and Australasia. Asian production rose by 5.6% to 1.27Bnt and North American production grew by 4.1% to 121Mt. European production remained static at 312Mt, with a slight dip in the European Union (EU) balanced by slight growth in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). China remained the largest steel producing country, with 9.28Mt in 2018. It was followed by India, Japan, the US and South Korea.

India: JSW Steel has signed a 10-year agreement with US-based Harsco for a range of mill services. Harsco will provide JSW Dolvi in Maharashtra with on-site slag handling services including under-furnace digging, ladle wrecking, and hot slag transport. No value for the contract has been disclosed.

India: The slag yard at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in Andhra Pradesh has collapsed. No injuries were reported during the incident, according to the Hindu newspaper. The cause of the accident remains unknown. The slag yard was built at the time of commissioning of the steel plant. An official said that production remained unaffected. Slag from the steel plant is supplied to cement and brick producers.

India: Engineering company Paul Wurth has released details on a new blast furnace it supplied for the Steel Authority of India’s (SAIL) Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh. It supplied, with Larsen & Toubro, a 2.8Mt/yr blast furnace for the site that was commissioned in February 2018. The unit was the eighth furnace at the plant following seven mid-size furnaces of Soviet design built from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Slag processing equipment for the furnace included an Inba slag granulation unit with a cooling tower. Other general equipment supplied for the project included: copper and cast iron staves; a 2H Bell Less Top charging syste
m with pressure equalizing valves and bleeders; cardan-type tuyere stocks; a hot stoves plant of three internal combustion chamber stoves with waste gas heat recovery and process valves of Paul Wurth design; pulverized coal injection based on dense-phase conveying with three injection hoppers and 70t/hr capacity; a top gas cleaning plant with axial cyclone; annular gap scrubber and downstream energy recovery turbine. Paul Wurth also supplied its BFXpert Level 2 automation system to allow and control of the plant operation.

Paul Wurth noted that a particular challenge of the project was to fit the new blast furnace into a brownfield building site. In particular, the layouts of the main charging conveyor, the racks for utilities pipes and cables and the railway tracks had to be finalised with ‘unconventional’ solutions.

Blast Furnace 8 at Bhilai is the largest blast furnace put into operation by Paul Wurth in India so far. It has an inner volume of 4060m³, a hearth diameter of 13.4m, four tapholes and 36 tuyeres. The nominal production is 8030t/day of hot metal.