NLMK’s VIZ-Stal starts production of new steel grades

Friday, 19 February 2010 15:29:27 (GMT+2)

VIZ-Stal, the Ekaterinburg-based subsidiary of the Russian steelmaker Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), has announced that it has started the production of new grades of anisotropic steel of 0.23-0.35 mm thickness, developed on the special requirements of consumers for high efficiency transformers.

Accordingly, the use of the new anisotropic steels allows a reduction of 5-10 percent in open-circuit losses, depending on the design of the electrical equipment.

"Considering that a lot of countries with high power consumption impose state regulation measures to reduce losses during power transformation, the output of products for which there is strong demand in the market is directed towards the increase of VIZ-Stal's competitiveness," reads the company's statement.

VIZ-Stal, with an annual production capacity of 200,000 mt, is a leading producer of cold rolled electrical steels and the largest producer of grain-oriented electrical steel in Russia. Its share of global grain-oriented electrical steel production is almost 11 percent.

In 2009, VIZ-Stal sold 101,000 mt of transformer steel - down about 45 percent year on year, due to the excessive transformer steel stocks in the world at the beginning of last year. However, stable demand in H2 2009 allowed the company to increase its sales by 165 percent compared to H1 2009 sales. In 2009, exports represented approximately 80 percent of VIZ-Stal's total sales portfolio.

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