OREANDA-NEWS. January 14, 2007. On January 1st 2008 a drop hammer plant at JSC Zlatoust Metallurgical Plant (part of the metallurgical holding of ESTAR Group) celebrated its 70th anniversary, reported today, on January 11th, the press service of ESTAR Group to UralPolit.Ru.

In 1938, personnel of the new unit numbered 373 workers and 21 engineers and technicians. Scrap cutting was carried out using kerosene cutters and heavily involving manual labour.

The drop hammer plant today is one of the fundamental units responsible for uninterrupted performance of steel making facility. The plant processes from 500 to 1,000 tons of charge on a daily basis. Shipment volumes vary from 900 to 1,200 tons.

It is worth mentioning that the drop hammer plant underwent large-scale overhaul in 2006-2007. It put into operation a shearing press of AKROS firm (France), purchased loaders by SENNEBOGEN and FUKS firms (Germany), and a NITON’s analyser (USA). Investments amounted to more than RR140 mn. There appeared a slag processing site. At present only electric furnace steelmaking waste is processed (3.5 t per month). The new equipment with capacity of up to 300 thousand tons of slag per year will allow processing not only accumulated waste of electric furnace, but also open-hearth steelmaking, including the slag from the New Zlatoust Electrometallurgical Plant (NZEMP) which is at the construction stage at the moment. Up to 95% of metal will be extracted from the slag. The investment value of the project will be over 40 mn RR with a payback period of 1.5 years.