Posted on 18 Oct 2023
Italian sections producer Duferco Travi e Profilati has inaugurated the new Smart Beam Manufacturing (SMB) rolling mill at its San Zeno Naviglio site near Brescia, boosting capacity and sustainability, Kallanish learns from the company.
The new SMB mill supplied by SMS meets the company’s objective of enlarging its product range, improving quality and boosting capacity. It says it plans to become the “best cost producer” for sections at an international level. The new mill has a capacity of 700,000 tonnes/year at an overall investment of €250 million ($264m).
The San Zeno Naviglio site will use mostly clean energy. Duferco has signed a long-term power purchase agreement with a wind energy producer which, coupled with the photovoltaic capacity installed at the facility, will allow the mill to fully function with renewable energy. This will reduce carbon footprint and cut 28,000 tonnes/year of CO2. The site is digitalised and will use artificial intelligence to optimise the production process and energy consumption in the pursuit of a “zero waste” policy.
“The mill uses the most modern digital technologies and data analysis to save energy, and water, and guarantee safety as well as product quality. Innovation and sustainability in the steel industry are one and the same. AI has brought about an epochal paradigm shift, even if the human factor, focus, empathy, competence, determination are indispensable ingredients that the machine cannot replace,” Duferco president Antonio Gozzi says in a note.
Duferco Travi e Profilati has four facilities in San Zeno Naviglio, Giammoro, Pallanzeno and San Giovanni Valdarno, with a combined yearly output of 1 million tonnes of long products.
Source:Kallanish
