Ukrainian steel pipe and railway wheel producer Interpipe has announced the launch of steel billet sales, produced by Interpipe Steel electric steel-melting complex. The steel billet mill, commissioned in 2012, produces round continuously cast billets for pipe and wheel steel grades with diameters ranging between 150 and 470 mm.
The mill has already shipped trial lots of ER7 steel grade billets to leading manufacturers of railway products in Spain, the Czech Republic and Germany, and EA1N and ОС steel grade billets for a Ukrainian axle producer.
Interpipe stated that the company is now reaching its designed production rates and that it is providing high-quality steel billets to its production facilities, as well as starting deliveries to other customers.
In June this year, Interpipe Steel melted its one millionth metric ton of steel billet. The mill's total production in the first nine months of 2013 reached approximately 900,000 mt of steel.
Interpipe Steel is a key project for Interpipe, designed to provide the company's pipe and wheel production with its own steel billets. When the mill reaches its designed capacity rate of 1.32 million mt per year, the self-sufficiency in billets for Interpipe production facilities will rise to 90 percent.