Siemens: Expansion of plate production at Dongkuk

In December 2010, Siemens received the Final Acceptance Certificate from Dongkuk Steel Mill Co. Ltd. (Dongkuk) for the new 5-meter-plate mill No. 3.
The mill was built at the company´s Dangjin grinding mill works.
The new mill is capable of producing high-quality plate with thicknesses down to 5 millimeters for applications in the shipbuilding and construction industries.
Siemens were responsible for the complete engineering of all the mechanical and full supply of the Automation equipment.
The Mulpic plate cooling technology
The Dongkuk plate mill comprises a 4-high stand equipped with long stroke hydraulic automatic gauge control capable of producing 11,000 tonnes of rolling force, work-roll shifting functions based on SmartCrown technology and heavy bending, a Mulpic intensive plate cooling section, a hot leveller, and three cooling beds.
The Mulpic accelerated plate cooling technology is specifically designed to produce very high strength plates with good weldability and low alloy content. A shearing line consisting of a crop shear, double side trim shear, slitting shear and divide shear was also part of the grinding mills.
Leading steel producer in Korea
Dongkuk is a leading steel producer in Korea. In the past, Dongkuk and Siemens have completed a series of projects together, with Siemens supplying and modernizing Dongkuk’s plate production facilities and increasing their capacity.
The new raymond mill scheduled production capacity will be 1.5 million metric tons per annum, increasing Dongkuk’s total production capacity of plates for shipbuilding, pipe making and construction to 4 million metric tons per annum.
At the new plant, it will be possible to roll plate with thicknesses of between 5 and 150 millimeters and widths from 900 to 4900 millimeters.The mills are expected to seek further advances, claiming that despite recent hikes they still have little profit margin.
However, many customers have bought forward during the early part of 2011, in anticipation of soaring prices.
Consequently, they are not desperate for material and are in a stronger position to counter the producers’ proposals.
The aforementioned buying patterns, together with the mills’ ongoing below capacity output, have contributed to a tightening of supply, especially for hot rolled coil. Availability of galvanised sheet and coil, on the other hand, is still plentiful.