UK-based plantmaker Primetals Technologies has announced that two of its two-strand continuous slab casters have recently gone into operation at Baosteel Zhanjiang, a subsidiary company of Chinese steelmaker Baoshan Iron and Steel Co. Ltd. (Baosteel). The machines are part of a new Baosteel production site in Guangdong Province in southern China. They have a total annual capacity of five million metric tons of high-quality, high-strength steel grades.
The continuous slab casting machines produce slabs in widths of up to 2,150 millimeters and with a thickness of 230 millimeters. The casting speed can be varied between 0.7 meters and 1.95 meters per minute. The high-strength steel grades produced are used to make pipes, containers and rail cars; interstitial-free (IF) steels are also produced.