The restart of the blast furnace 3 after its relining in 2008 has been one of the greatest events at our Bremen site,

The operation start of the blast furnace 3 was initially planned for December 2008. In the course of the economic crisis, it had to be postponed, so the blast furnace 3 could only be restarted in September 2009.

“I am very proud of what we have managed here! All colleagues and partners did an excellent job and we succeeded in finishing this huge project without having a single accident,” said Jörn Pufpaff, head of the blast furnace department.

The relined blast furnace 3 will help to secure hundreds of jobs at the mill. Without this, the furnace would have been decommissioned, but the high reliability has argued in its favour.

“The future of the site still depends on reaching the cost reduction and succeeding in im-provement projects. Reaching these goals will secure the profitability of the site in the long term,” said Robrecht Himpe, CEO of Flat Carbon Europe, at the start-up ceremony in September 2009.

Check out a video on the Bremen restart on STAHLtv (in German)

Author: Dirk Helm, Communications, ArcelorMittal Bremen

In 2008 CERN acquired a new particle accelerator: the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which was then installed in a tunnel 27 km long, located 100 metres underground. When fully operational, trillions of protons, accelerated to 99.99% of the speed of light, make 11 245 laps of the accelerator per second and allow physicists to study the smallest known particles: the elementary building blocks of matter.

Thanks to close collaboration between ArcelorMittal’s R&D and techno commercial teams, our Group won the contract to supply steel for the accelerator by proposing a new high thickness steel which met CERN’s expectations perfectly.

Our understanding of the universe may be about to change with the aid of the LHC and the $10bn project has been described as the world’s largest scientific experiment.

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. The beams have been pushed to 3.5 trillion electron volts, the highest energy achieved by any physics accelerator. Scientists have now succeeded to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles. The first step towards the explanation of the big bang, and using ArcelorMittal steel!

Collaboration: Dieter Vandenhende, Flat Carbon Europe & Automotive Worldwide, ArcelorMittal 

“Hi,
My name is Hans Roegies, I am 40 years old and currently working as a controller within the IT Supply Western Europe organisation at the site of Gent (Belgium). I started working for ArcelorMittal in 1995 within the IT department of former Sidmar, as an application analyst in the Back Office domain (applications of the Accounting department).

Working at the Gent steel plant has been a kind of a “family tradition”: my grandfather worked here in the early days of Sidmar, as did my father. He was employed as a mechanic within the cold rolling mill from 1969 until 2001, when he retired. One of my uncles has also been working here, as did my aunt, who worked here as a secretary. My brother has joined the company in 1997, he’s driving the impressive Kress-vehicles in the plant that are used to transport the slabs!

I guess you could say we have some “iron” in our blood…

I have 2 kids myself, a 14 year old boy and a 12 year old girl. They’re not yet up to the stage of making plans for their “career”, but you never know what the future will bring for them.  Maybe the tradition will live on?

A lot has changed since the first Roegies started his career at Sidmar. The steel business has had its ups and downs in the past, but neither one of my family members has ever lived a crisis such as the one we are confronted with today. I think we should all do our best to help this company survive this difficult episode in its history…  After all, it’s a bit of a family business, don’t you think )”

Picture: (isn’t it great?) Jeroen Op De Beeck

If Don Quixote were to ride again through the steps of La Mancha, he would not fight against the windmills that moved the wheels to grind wheat. These giants with fabric-coated arms rotating lazily in front of the lance of the hidalgo knight errant look quite different now…

Today, that fight would be even more unequal, as windmills have now turned into 90 metre high towers. Don Quixote would never manage to knock down these colossi, supported on steel feet and which react swiftly to the slightest puff of wind. Not in vain does Spain rank 3^rd in the world in terms of installed wind power!

If the ingenious gentleman, born of Cervantes’ imagination, were to come to life today and march through Spain, he would not recognise his country. Besides the time elapsed, the greater part of the transformation undergone by Spain results from technological progress, of which steelmaking is a great example.

From the famed Toledan swords, that played such an important part in numerous epic battles in Spanish history, to today’s steel grades, there has been a constant technological evolution.

Now, there is only one battle these steel giants want to win: the environmental battle – through the generation of clean energy!

Authors: Ignacio Agreda and Oscar Fleites, ArcelorMittal Spain, Communications

ArcelorMittal announced on February 1, 2008 that it has agreed to a solution proposed by the federal and regional governments of Belgium regarding the CO2 quota allocation issue and will consequently prepare for the relaunch of the Seraing (Liège, Belgium) blast furnace n°6.

The federal and regional governments of Belgium submitted a solution to ArcelorMittal to allow for the restart of the Seraing blast furnace. This solution involves an intervention from the part of the Regional and the Federal governments as well as from the part of the companies. ArcelorMittal has agreed to this and is currently planning the relaunch of the Liège blast furnace with a view to start producing hot steel starting end of February.

Michel Wurth, member of ArcelorMittal’s Group Management Board, in charge of Flat Carbon Europe, Automotive, Plates and R&D, expressed his satisfaction following this proposal. He thanked the authorities who had thus made possible the immediate relaunch of the blast furnace and added that this would definitely strengthen the competitiveness and job situation in Liège and the Walloon Region.

This breakthrough technology, developed as a world first by the Group’s Research and Development in partnership with the Walloon Region, will open up a host of new uses for flat steel products. With this process steel can be a sensor, a reflector, a source of light, an anti-bacterial or self-cleaning surface, or just simply more aesthetic or endowed with better anti-corrosive properties.
This process is one of ArcelorMittal’s promising development projects and will contribute to renewing and expanding its product range. Respectful of the environment it enables the production of environmentally friendly products that allow for sustainable development.
According to Christophe Cornier, EVP Flat Carbon Western Europe, with Arceo ArcelorMittal will transform the future of steel, opening up new horizons for it. Greg Ludkovsky, VP Research and Development, said that they were very happy to see that this project initiated within their research centres was becoming an industrial success.

According to Jos Jacqué, CEO, Long Carbon, North America, ArcelorMittal wants to develop a sustainable Canadian steel business. With the former Dofasco facility now part of ArcelorMittal in Hamilton, it does not make business sense to have Contrecœur compete with a sister company in the flat carbon segment while Dofasco has unused capacity.

Other factors cited are the exchange rate, the cost of metallics and significant increases in iron ore and natural gas prices.

A group of 16 technicians from nine tinplate production plants in the USA visited ArcelorMittal Packaging España Etxebarri plant, as part of the Tin Mill European Tour organised by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI).

This programme is aimed at providing the sector’s technicians and managers with an opportunity to discover the processes, technologies and management models in plants similar to their own.

The AISI group has been touring the different European tin mill plants. Apart from Etxebarri they also visited the ArcelorMittal Florange plant, the US Steel plants at Kosice and Servia, and the Rasselstein factory in Germany.

Their day in Bilbao also included a visit to ArcelorMittal Sestao and to the Guggenheim Museum. The visitors and the ArcelorMittal Etxebari technicians were very enthusiastic about the visit, as it was an interesting opportunity to exchange experiences that help to strengthen the presence of tinplate on the market.

United on a shared, fitted out and landscaped stand, all ArcelorMittal’s segments (Long Products, Flat Products, Stainless, Steel Solutions and Services) mustered at the international building exhibition Batimat.

Batimat is the international building exhibition held every 2 years in Paris (France). Around 400,000 visitors were expected this year, from Monday 5 to Saturday 10 November.

Building and Construction Support (BCS) under the direction of Pierre Bourrier, brought ArcelorMittal Construction’s resources together, on 600 m², and into an organisation that ran without a hitch.

Visiting GMB member Gonzalo Urquijo was very impressed by the stand. CEO Steel Solutions and Services Philippe Darmayan emphasized the advantage for the customer of finding all of ArcelorMittal’s construction products in a single location: a very professional, informative stand, and above all, the more representative ArcelorMittal construction offer, displayed in a particularly attractive space.

In his opening speech, GMB member Michel Wurth said that ArcelorMittal wanted to listen to their customers and to understand their requirements for the future. Executive Vice President Vijay Bhatnagar gave an overview of the steel market in Central and Eastern Europe, where demand for steel is level with or above the GDP growth rate. Further presentations gave customers a comprehensive overview of ArcelorMittal Flat Carbon Europe’s market position and complete steel solutions offering.

A key theme of the conference was ArcelorMittal’s unique responsibility as the leader in the steel industry. On-the-spot interviews with participants indicated a high level of satisfaction with the organisation of the event. During the visit of the Krakow plant, the site’s “baby” – its new hot strip mill – was a particular hit with visitors.