OREANDA-NEWS. A new continuous casting machine with the annual capacity of over 1 million tonnes of billets was commissioned at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, subsidiary of Mechel OAO (NYSE: MTL). The new continuous caster will allow Mechel to significantly reduce its production costs and improve the quality of long products.

According to the press service of “Mechel”, the new concaster is one of the main projects in the plant’s modernization program. The production capacity of the new machine is over 1 million tonnes of 100-mm, 180-mm square and 150-mm round billets annually. The equipment was supplied by Danieli, one of the world leaders in metallurgical engineering.

When the new concaster reaches full capacity, the share of steel billets produced through the continuous casting technology will increase from 30% to 50%. Implementation of this project, with total cost of over US$100 million, is aimed at increasing the performance of Mechel’s steel segment through reducing per tonne steel, ferroalloy, and electric power consumption and significantly improving the quality of finished products.

A portion of the new unit’s output will be allocated to meet the needs of Mechel’s other subsidiary, Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant, in wire rod production and future hardware production. The remaining part will be allocated to manufacturing high added value products at CMP at its rolling mills. Billets produced at concaster No. 4 will be used in manufacturing high quality rebars, including thermo-strengthened rebars.

Significant attention was given to the installation of modern environmental protection equipment.

Also, implementation of the concasting process, instead of high cost technology for long bar production through casting ingots and further processing them with a blooming mill, increases CMP’s competitiveness with world and Russian steel enterprises.