Japan: Aichi Steel is set to increase production of AS Shot, a high strength abrasive shot made using steel slag. It plans to upgrade its Chita plant to increase output fivefold for the 2017 financial year, according to Japan Metal Daily. Shooting is applied for plating base materials and removing rust in a wide range of fields including bridges, automobiles and shipbuilding. Use of AS Shot reduces the amount of dust generated during blasting and enables treatment to have a long life and excellent machinability.

Zambia: BMR Group has finished laboratory scale test work on its imperial smelting furnace (ISF) slag dump at its Kabwe site. The company now intends to commission a study to convert its ISFS stockpile into a Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) compliant resource. The site contains potentially 120,000t of zinc.

"These results are especially encouraging as they demonstrate the potential for BMR to extract a greater proportion of the in situ materials at Kabwe than previously anticipated for the benefit of our shareholders. We will therefore be commissioning a JORC survey of the ISF slag and will report the results of this survey to shareholders when available," said chairman Alex Borrelli.

Following the tests the company has announced that, in co-operation with Kupfermelt Metal Processing, its has reached a recovery of 85% zinc and 91% lead at a leach temperature of 80°C and 75% zinc and 80% lead at an ambient temperature. It has also more than halved its sulphuric acid consumption, compared to tests run in September 2015, to approximately 500kg/t. The sulphating acid brine leach process also recovered approximately 90% of the contained vanadium from the slag/leach plant residues (LPR) composite. The IFS slag potentially contains 9000t of vanadium which is expected to be recovered in the form of vanadium pentoxide.

BMR's metallurgical partner has advised that the proposed Kabwe processing plant can in due course be modified to incorporate a sulphating acid brine leach circuit to process the slag/LPR composite. The company's strategy remains however to treat first the wash plant tailings with the acid brine leach process.

India: The state government of Odisha has asked the Steel Authority of India to build infrastructure, including a cement plant, in the Sundargarh district. The admission came about at a meeting between Steel Authority chairman P K Singh and chief minister Naveen Patnaik at the state secretariat. Other projects the state would like the steel producer to build include a hospital, a medical college and an education centre, according to the Times of India.

Egypt: Harsco Corporation’s Metals & Minerals division has signed a new, multiyear contract with Ezz Steel, a steel producer in the Middle East and North Africa. The US$35m contract calls for the provision of mill services at Ezz Steel’s Sadat City plant. Under the terms of the agreement, Harsco will provide slag and scrap management services at Sadat City, with future plans to design and deliver metal recovery and briquetting plants. Service at the Sadat City plant began on 1 July 2016.

This new contract builds on Harsco’s existing service agreements with Ezz Steel Group plants in Sokhna and Alexandria, Egypt. In operation since the 1980s, Ezz Steel has a combined production capacity of nearly 6Mt/yr of finished steel.

“This new contract is an excellent opportunity for Harsco to build an even stronger presence in this strategically important region,” said Harsco President and CEO Nick Grasberger. Harsco’s expanded agreement with Ezz Steel further broadens Metals & Minerals’ business landscape in the African and Middle Eastern steel markets.