MMK’s Plate Mill 5000 Sets Annual Production Record in 2019

1.286 million tonnes of hot-rolled steel were produced at the thick-sheet Mill 5000 of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), a Metal-Expo regular exhibitor, In 2019. This is the highest annual production rate since the unit was launched.

The previous record was set at the mill in 2010, when it produced 1.160 million tonnes of rolled products. MMK's thick-sheet Mill 5000 was commissioned in 2009. The mill, whose products primarily meet the needs of the Russian oil and gas industry, has become the most productive among similar units in Europe. The mill equipment complex includes a unique rolling cage that is the most powerful in the world and has a maximum rolling force of approximately 12 thousand tonnes.

With a production capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of metal products per year, Mill 5000 is a key unit of the MMK complex for the production of thick-sheet products, in addition to the mill, the complex includes an out-of-furnace processing complex and caster number 6. The mill is designed to produce high-margin thick-sheet rolled products up to 4,850 mm wide and with a strength category of up to X120.

The new continuous hot-dip galvanising unit No3, built by Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works in 2017, produced 334.6 thousand tonnes of galvanised metal in 2019. A year earlier, the unit produced 278.9 thousand tonnes of galvanised steel. As such, it is very close to the design capacity of 360 thousand tonnes per year. The unit, built on the site of sheet rolling shop No 11, is designed to manufacture products with a zinc coating, which is applied by hot-dip galvanising to thin-sheet cold-rolled products made of low-carbon steel. The equipment for the new unit was supplied by SMS group from Germany; the contract was signed in July 2015. The project cost 6 billion rubles. The cold-rolled strip without coating, which is produced by sheet rolling shop No 11, is used as a semi-finished rolled stock for the continuous hot-dip galvanising unit No 3.