Dillinger Hütte to invest €15 million in new heat-treatment furnace

This future-orientated investment is part of a program aimed at accessing new markets. It will enable Dillinger Hütte to meet rising demand for more sophisticated products and reinforce the company's strategy of alignment around a more complex sales mix with a greater proportion of higher added-value products. The new heat-treatment furnace will have a length of 60 meters and a monthly capacity of 9000 tonnes, and will improve even further the quality of high-tensile-strength thermomechanically rolled steels and their weldability characteristics. The focus in the production of such thermomechanically rolled plate is on the temperature-controlled rolling process and plate cooling. Demand for steels with exclusive combinations of properties and special dimensions is rising. "20% of our turnover comes from steels that have been developed here at Dillingen in the past five years" states company chairman, Dr. Paul Belche. These plate products are used, for example, in structural-steel engineering for construction of new high-rise buildings, such as the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is currently undergoing construction and will be the world's second-largest high-rise when completed, for offshore wind farms (including the Horns Rev project off the Danish coast) and for construction of offshore rigs for use in extremely cold latitudes, as in Alaska and Russia, for example. "Dillinger Hütte's response to new market challenges takes the form of consistent and systematic product development. Our researchers, engineers and technologists, in close cooperation with our customers, are continuously involved in finding new solutions in steel" emphasizes Dr. Norbert Bannenberg, Technology Chairman at Dillinger Hütte.