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Danieli Year in Review 2011-2012

12/27/2012 - On 20 October 2012, Danieli Group brought together corporate shareholders, customers, local authorities and financial analysts for the presentation of its 2011–2012 annual report. Chairman and CEO Gianpietro Benedetti presented Danieli’s financial and technological results for the previous fiscal year.

On 20 October 2012, Danieli Group brought together corporate shareholders, customers, local authorities and financial analysts for the presentation of its 2011–2012 annual report. The gathering took place in Buttrio, Italy, where the group is headquartered. Chairman and CEO Gianpietro Benedetti presented Danieli’s financial and technological results for the previous fiscal year.
Danieli registered a net profit of €190.4 million for the year ending 30 June 2012, down from €192.5 million the previous year. Mr. Benedetti clarified the results by revealing that the company was forced to temporarily shut down some construction sites in North America and the Middle East. However, the results generally confirmed the forecasts which had been made the previous year. The company’s order book at 30 June 2012 was €3.225 billion, while it had been forecast at €3.100 billion. The steelmaking sector fared well, with a revenue of €891.6 million, up 9% year-on-year, while the plantmaking sector’s revenue stood at nearly €2.19 billion. Acquisitions during the 2011–2012 fiscal year included: Akros Henscel, for eco-friendly ferrous scrap processing; Ing. Candotti Impianti Industriali, for lifting equipment for ports and other applications; and Olivotta Ferre, for heat treatment furnaces and systems.
 
Dneprosteel, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine
Prior to the shareholders meeting, members of the press, including Iron & Steel Technology, were invited to tour the brand-new 1.32 million tons/year (mtpy) specialty steel meltshop at Dneprosteel, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, which Danieli supplied on a complete turnkey basis for Interpipe Steel. The EAF facility produces round billets and blooms for pipes and rail wheels. The first cast took place on 17 January 2012, with 100 tons of steel cast in 385-mm-dia. blooms. On 7 February, the first pipe from the first billet was produced.
Danieli’s investment in the steelmaking plant totaled €260 million. More than 100 companies and more than 3,000 employees were involved in the construction, 30% of those being local companies. The mill was designed to meet 90% of Interpipe’s internal needs for billets for pipe and railway wheel production by 2014. Interpipe plans to expand to the plant’s full capacity of 2 mtpy, should the market demands for its products increase.

The mini-mill designed and built by Danieli includes all the technological production facilities, the auxiliary plants and services, along with all the infrastructure, civil works and supporting buildings. The new meltshop consists of:

• A 160-t FastArcTM AC EAF, equipped with chemical energy injection technology and HiREG electrode digital regulation system.
• Refining station made up of an inert roof-type, twin-station ladle furnace and a double-tank VD unit
• A 4-strand FastCast bloom caster and a 5-strand FastCast billet caster for casting of 150- to 470-mm-dia. billets and blooms.
The meltshop also includes all auxiliary plants and equipment, including the material handling system, fume dedusting plant and cranes. Danieli Automation supplied all the electrical systems and fully integrated automation system for the entire plant, including level 3.
In 2011, Interpipe began a campaign to improve its workplace culture, starting with comfortable working conditions to positively influence production. The company views itself as a “catalyst of changes in Ukrainian metallurgy, a mill of the future.” The average age of the 700 Dneprosteel employees is 31, and 76% of its workforce has earned a college degree. The mill also symbolizes a “marriage between art and industry,” as the exterior of the plant features five large-scale works by artist Olafur Eliasson.
Interpipe is the largest investment project in Ukraine since its independence and the first metallurgical plant built in the country in the last 40 years. With the launch of this new Danieli melting facility, Interpipe transitions to a vertically integrated company, from scrap procurement and processing to the production of steel billets, to steel pipes and railway wheels, and finally to customer service.
 
Marcegaglia, Ravenna, Italy

The press also toured a second plant, Marcegaglia’s cold mill complex in Ravenna, Italy. Marcegaglia, one of the world’s leading steel transformers, has a group yearly output of 5.1 million tons of welded tubes, open profiles, drawn tubes, panels, coils, strips and sheets made from carbon and stainless steel. The Ravenna plant has the largest flats output capacity of the group.

Prior to recent expansions, existing capacity at the Ravenna plant included:
• Two continuous pickling lines (2.5 mtpy)
• One continuous tandem mill (1.5 mtpy)
• Batch annealing and skinpass (1.0 mtpy)
• Hot-dip galvanizing line (HDGL) #1 for heavy gauges (0.5 mtpy) and #2 for prepainted steel (0.35 mtpy)
• Color coating line (0.2 mtpy)
 
In 2010–2011, Danieli completed the following expansions to the facility:
• 2-stand cold reversing mill (0.7 mtpy)
• HDGL #4 for heavy-gauge low-carbon and HSLA steels (0.6 mtpy) and #3 with in-line painting (0.35 mtpy, 50% painted)
 
The 2-stand 4-hi cold mill, which features Danieli’s INNOVACTION cold rolling technology, started up in January 2011, and is capable of rolling strip 900–1,550 mm wide and 0.25–1.50 mm thick. Hydraulic automatic gauge control eliminates not only disturbances caused by the backup rolls, but also those caused by work rolls.
HDGL #4 started up in October 2010, and #3 started up in June 2011. Danieli supplied the terminals, cleaning, air knives, skinpass and tension leveler for both galvanizing lines. The painting section was completed in October 2011. Danieli Automation supplied the electrical and automation systems. The DFF vertical annealing furnaces from Danieli Centro Combustion were a close copy of the one that had been started up on HDGL #2 in 2004.
One stand-alone color coating line was already in operation at Ravenna to cover the production of small batches and special products. But the new in-line painting line offers the possibility of reducing production costs, number of operators, handling time, etc. Incorporating the color coating with the HDGL is ideal for large-batch production of standard steel products.
Marcegaglia expects to expand its group output to 6.0 million tons in 2013. As a result of current investments in manufacturing plants worldwide, the output of carbon and stainless steel tubes and sheets will be double what it was a decade ago, estimated to bring the group’s global turnover to nearly €5 billion in 2013.
 
Danieli’s 2012–2013 Outlook
For 2012–2013, Danieli expects its plantmaking results to remain relatively steady, but the steelmaking sector will most likely see a decline because of a weak European steel market. Even so, the group is making several key investments in the coming fiscal year:
• Expansion of the Buttrio Research Centre.
• Investments of €40 million in the Buttrio workshops.
• Expansion of the engineering departments and workshops in China to twice their current size.
• Building a €60 million factory in India and a service facility in Russia.
At its subsidiary steelmaking plant, Acciaierie Bertoli Safau SpA (ABS), Danieli has decided to revamp the existing blooming mill and has launched a number of activities for the production of value-added special steel grades. Danieli has also acquired the Sisak steel mill in Croatia to produce special semi-finished products in quality steel grades, and will be upgrading the existing equipment accordingly.
This article, written by Karen D. Hickey, was featured in the January 2013 issue of Iron & Steel Technology.