Yekaterinburg-based VIZ-Stal LLC (VIZ-Stal), the world's leading producer of cold rolled electrical steel and the largest producer of grain-oriented (GO) steel in Russia, a subsidiary of Russian steelmaker NLMK Group, has signed a contract with LOI Thermprocess (Germany) for the supply and supervision of assembly of equipment for the revamping of its electric insulation coating line (EICL-8) as a part of NLMK's technical upgrade program launched in 2007.
The upgrade of the strip finishing line is a major step towards setting up a process flow for mastering the production of a new product - high permeability steel; it will also improve thin-gage product surface quality and boost grain-oriented steel competitiveness in the global market.
EICL-8 will be the first line at VIZ-Stal's cold rolling shop with natural gas strip heating in place of electrical heating. It will reduce energy consumption by 30 percent. The line's performance will improve significantly with yields increasing by more than 1.5 times.
The overall cost of the project is expected to be approximately $ 0.39 billion. The startup of the revamped EICL-8 is scheduled for 2013.