OREANDA-NEWS. On 08 April 2009 was announced, that at Electric-Weld Pipe Workshop No. 3 (EWPW-3) of the Electric Pipe-Welding Division for small and medium diameter pipes (EPWD SMD), Vyksa Steel Works (VSW, Nizhni Novgorod Region), part of United Metallurgical Company (OMK), had launched facilities for the production of hot-rolled seamless pipes. They are used as blanks for the manufacture of couplings for casing pipes produced by Electric-Weld Pipe Workshop No. 5 of EPWD SMD.

The investments accounted for about 500 million rubles. The equipment of the facilities includes a rotary saw manufactured by Austria-based Linsinger, a reheating furnace made by Italy-based Olivotto, a piercing mill and a sizing mill manufactured by Elektrostal Heavy Engineering Works (EZTM, Moscow Region). "The unique technology for the new facilities was developed by the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys and Istok ML (Moscow)," said Yevgeny Mudrilov, Head of VSW EPWD SMD. What makes it different from the traditional seamless pipe technology is that blank piercing and rolling operations are combined at one screw rolling mill, while pipe straightening and grooving operations are performed at one sizing mill. Therefore, this reduces metal consumption, makes our facilities more compact, and ensures high precision geometry for the manufacture of coupling blanks and, consequently, high quality of products."

The coupling blank facilities will annually produce at least 22 thousand tonnes of seamless pipes of 73 mm to 273 mm in diameter made of steel grades ranging from J55 to P110. This will fully cover VSW's needs for coupling blanks. It will be twice as cheap for the Company to buy rounds from Russia and Ukraine-based smelters and run its own production facilities than to purchase finished seamless pipes. This equipment will enable the Company to produce up to 50 thousand tonnes of seamless pipes a year, which will make it possible to supply them to other consumers. In the future, it is planned to use this production section to manufacture pipes for the military-industrial sector. There are also plans to manufacture products for the machine-building industry that have not been produced in Russia so far – thick-walled seamless pipe and hollow axles for rail cars.

VSW is Russia's largest manufacturer of casing pipes designed for the development of oil and gas fields. In 2008, VSW produced 262 thousand tonnes of casing pipes, which is by 5% more than in 2007, while OMK's share in the Russian casing pipe market increased from 23% to 24%.