Liberty Galati, Romania's largest flat steelmaker and a subsidiary of Liberty Group, has stated that it will invest RON 150 million (€30 million) in a cooling facility for its heavy plate mill. The project will be completed next year and will allow the company to deliver higher value and quality products.
According to Liberty Galati’s statement, the accelerated cooling plant will allow the company to strengthen its presence in the most profitable market segments, to increase productivity and to expand its portfolio of value-added products while improving product quality for its customers in the offshore, shipbuilding, construction, and pressure vessel markets.
“This state-of-the-art plate cooling system represents another milestone in LIBERTY Galati’s strategy to expand its portfolio of high value-added products and increase production flexibility and profitability. The integrated cooling system is essential for modern plate mills, as we have here at Galati, to produce higher strength and value-added grades which require higher cooling rates and better cooling accuracy,” Sandip Biswas, CEO at Liberty Primary Steel & Mining, said in the press release.
Furthermore, according to the statement of Ajay Aggarwal, Liberty Steel Group president and board chairman of Liberty Galati, the investment will be coordinated with the company's Greensteel transformation strategy and its projected partnership with Primetals Technologies for cooling technologies.
The partnership's specifications include that Primetals Technologies will supply Liberty Galati MULPIC (Multi-Purpose Interrupted Cooling) technology and a water treatment plant in order to achieve the appropriate cooling rate and temperature reduction for plates with various product dimensions.
At the moment, Liberty Galati’s heavy plate mill produces plates up to 4,000 mm wide and up to 180 mm thickness and thermo-mechanically controlled processed (TMCP) grades, but also has a fully integrated flow including a new hot leveler machine, US testing machine and a marking machine.