On June 4, Emirates Steel Industries (ESI), the largest integrated steel producer in the UAE, announced that the 150 mt electric arc furnace (EAF) of its Phase 1 steelmaking plant has exceeded the designed capacity for a furnace of its size, setting a new world daily output record producing 5,197 mt of liquid steel, converted into 4,993.8 mt of billets through its continuous casting machine.
Saeed Ghumran Al Romaithi, Emirates Steel's senior vice president of operations, stated that the steelmaking plant's designed capacity has been exceeded in a short period of time since startup, reaching a tap-to-tap time of 42.2 minutes and power-on time of 36 minutes. He also added that reaching this target in a short period of time should be considered as a big achievement indicating "more challenging targets of Emirates Steel" as it grows.
Emirates Steel is implementing a two-phased expansion program. Phase 1, already complete, transformed the company from a simple steel re-roller to being the first fully-integrated steel manufacturer in the UAE and significantly increased the company's annual rolling capacity to around 2 million mt. Phase 2, with a production capacity of 1 million mt, will increase the total rolling capacity to 3 million mt. Also, after the completion of Phase 2, the production capacity of the EAF will double reaching 2.8 million mt.