OREANDA-NEWS. January 18, 2011. In early December, 2010, United Metallurgical Company (OMK) started installing primary production equipment in the rolling-mill area of the under-construction sheet-rolling facility Mill 5000 (part of Vyksa Steel Works, based in Vyksa, Nizhni Novgorod Region).

The equipment assembly started with the installation of roll housings manufactured by Germany-based SMS Siemag AG. "This assembly operation is unique because one assembled housing weighs about 560 tonnes," said Mill 5000 Project Manager Aleksandr Rybkin. To assemble two housings, we had to use a specialized hydraulic portal and hydraulic jacks."

The rolling mill is the key equipment of the mill. After its installation, the contractors will start to assemble other equipment of the main production line: a water descaling unit, machines for preliminary hot straightening, a controlled sheet-cooling unit, etc. It is planned to complete the assembly and commissioning operations in the area in May 2011.

Let us remind that OMK started the installation of main equipment in the Mill 5000 furnace area in July 2010. The construction of Mill 5000 was launched in 2007. The new facilities will produce broad sheets using heavy-duty steels. The annual design capacity will reach 1.2 million tonnes of sheets (rolled products), which will fully cover Vyksa Steel Works' needs for raw materials to manufacture large-diameter pipes and make it possible to supply sheets to metallurgical, machine-building, and other entities. It is planned to launch production in mid-2011.