Aksu Ferroalloys Plant increases production space
Aksu Ferroalloys Plant — an affiliate of JSC “TNC “Kazchrome”, a part of Eurasian Group (ERG), increases the area of one of the four smelting shops. The implementation of the project, which is estimated at almost 3.3 billion tenge, will allow the world’s largest metallurgical enterprise to solve simultaneously several important production tasks.
Today the plant has four smelting shops. In the smelting shop № 1 six electric furnaces operate. Until recently, two of them were involved in the production of chrome alloys, four — manganese alloys. From 2016 two more furnaces of the shop were converted to ferrochrome smelting, which required additional space, both in the casting bay and in the finished goods warehouse.
— Chrome production differs from manganese by twice the large amount of slag formed during the process. It requires a lot of manipulation, additional equipment and machinery, — notes the director of the plant Sergey Prokopiev.— Converting furnaces, we understood perfectly well what difficulties we would encounter. Since shop No. 1, which was originally designed and built on the slag-free production, does not have the necessary infrastructure. But the plant has always been distinguished by flexibility and timely response to changes in the world market. Therefore it was decided to expand the smelting shop.
During construction, the length of the building of the shop as a whole will increase by 48 meters, and the building of the warehouse of finished products — by 30. Today here earthworks are being carried out with the arrangement of foundations. The entire electrical part, gas ducts will be moved, the railway and crane tracks of the smelting building will be extended. Another electric bridge crane will be installed in the casting bay, and additional components of crushing, screening, loading of big bags and other operations will be installed at the finished product warehouse during preparation for shipment of finished products.
A partner in the development of the project was the Ukrainian institute Giproprom, and the general contractor of construction and installation work was Stalmontazh LLP. It is planned to complete the expansion of the smelting shop No. 1 in October this year.
At the end of 2018 Aksu Ferroalloys Plant increased its production by 2.7% and produced 1.12 million tons of chrome, manganese and siliceous ferroalloys.