Sheffield wins Russian steel plant contract

The contract will provide Russian steel giant, United Metallurgical Company, (OMK) with a cutting-edge large scale plate rolling mill, enabling it to feed Russia's growing domestic demand for wider section steel plate. SFIL is one of the few companies in the world with the engineering capacity to produce the cast steel mill housings, which will be made in sections and once assembled will enable OMK to produce metal plate up to six metres wide, compared to a more conventional three metre standard. Sheffield Forgemasters Engineering sales director Volker Schaffer said: "There are very few rolling mills of this size in the world. This contract will therefore provide Russia with the latest generation of steel plate producing mill. "The mill will weigh more than 1000 tonnes when fully assembled, and for our part, we will manufacture and supply the four cast sections which combine to make a complete mill housing for the operational steel rolling machinery." The mill housing, designed and built for Sheffield Forgemasters' client, SMS Demag, conforms to newly developed styles, creating wider plate to reduce the amount of welding required in large scale construction industries such as ship building.