Austria-based steelmaker Voestalpine Stahl GmbH has announced that despite the global economic crisis that characterized the financial year 2009-10, the steelmaker managed to continue its €700 million large investment program ‘L6', even if some sub-projects were suspended.
According to the company's statement, about half of the individual projects of the program ‘L6', which aims at the expansion of crude steel production from 5.5 million mt to about 6 million mt per year, were able to be implemented despite the crisis.
With a new power plant, electricity generation increased and energy self-sufficiency of the Linz site has been increased to 90 percent.
In addition, with the ongoing commissioning of the hot-dip galvanizing plant no. 5, capacity for hot-dip galvanized sheets increased significantly with an investment of €3 billion.
The lining of the blast furnace no.5 was carried out between December 2009 and mid-March 2010. Before the renewal of the blast furnace no. 5, the company had also renewed its blast furnace no. 6, which was recommissioned in September 2009. The two small blast furnaces have a combined capacity of around 1.6 million mt of pig iron per year, equivalent to about half that of the blast furnace A. The total investment for the renewal of the small blast furnaces was around €30 million.
The new hot-dip galvanizing plant no. 5 is the last investment project in the investment program ‘Linz 2010'. The new plant will manufacture 400,000 metric tons of galvanized strips for the automotive, building and domestic appliance industry. The characteristic of this new plant is that the coating can be made not only with zinc, but also with zinc iron as well as with zinc aluminium magnesium. The total investment expenditure for the hot-dip galvanizing plant is approximately €140 million.