Baku Steel Company (BSC), a steel producer based in Azerbaijan, has stated that it has signed a contract with Italian company Danieli for the purchase of production equipment, the use of which will reduce its use of scrap in steelmaking to 20 percent.
"The new unit will provide automatic feeding of ferroalloy products and direct reduction of iron from ore (DRI(direct reduced iron)/HBI (hot briquetted iron)) directly into the melting furnace. This equipment can use up to 80 percent DRI and HBI during melting. And this, in turn, will lead to a reduction in the use of scrap as the main raw material, given that its presence in the country is rather limited,” the company said in a statement.
BSC is also going to buy the Italian company's modern type continuous casting machine (Fastcastcupe), which will make it possible to produce round billets for pipes, currently imported from Russia. This machine pours metal into three streams at a speed of five meters per minute with a radius of nine meters, and it will be possible to pour both round and square billets with it.
The production capacity of BSC allows processing of 1.1 million mt of steel per year.