Vietnamese Hoa Phat Steel operates four Danieli mills at Hai Duong and recently upgraded its number four mill, adding an EWR/K-Welding unit in order to perform endless rolling.
The Hai Duong mill was originally designed to produce 600kt/yr of rebar products and is fed 12-metre long billets through a 115 tonnes/hr pusher-type reheating furnace.
Once installed, the EWR/K-Welding unit increased mill productivity by approximately 8%, with over 1% improvement of yield.
The machine welds 150-mm and 165-mm square billets to produce rebar from 10mm to 32 mm, while the mill finishes bars up to 16 mm using two-strand slitting technology.
The final acceptance for the billet welder has been released and the expected payback time is less than 18 months.
Hoa Phat is one of the three largest steel producers in Vietnam and the new EWR/K-Welding unit is the second installed in the country.
