Global Steel Wire S.A. awards SMS Concast modernization order for a six-strand billet caster

Global Steel Wire S.A. (Celsa Group), located in Santander, Spain, has placed the order for the upgrade of their continuous billet casting machine with SMS Concast, a company of SMS group. Steel production at Global Steel Wire S.A. (GSW) is focused on wire rod in special steel grades for the automotive and special engineering industries. Currently, the existing caster produces roughly 900,000 tons of steel per year in 180 millimeter square sections. The aim of the modernization is to increase the production flexibility by broadening the range of cast formats by the addition of 200 to 240 millimeter square sections, increasing the casting speeds, and consequently enhancing the productivity and the quality of the cast products.

The upgrade is to be implemented with minimized interruption of production. The start-up of the upgraded machine is scheduled for early 2021.

The order includes the installation of CONDRIVE mold oscillation drive systems on all strands. CONDRIVE has already been tested and has been successfully running on one strand at Global Steel Wire since October 2018. Also the powerful electromagnetic mold stirrers, CONSTIR-MEMS are part of the supply in order to achieve the required quality standards. As an additional feature of the stirring system, CONSTIR-MWS (Modulated Wave Stirring) will allow the energy consumption of the stirrers to be reduced by up to 30 percent.

Taking another step towards Industrie 4.0, the CONSAFE thermal mold mapping technology will be implemented in order to help analyze and improve the process conditions to achieve best quality.

SMS group is a group of companies internationally active in plant construction and mechanical engineering for the steel and nonferrous metals industry. It has some 14,000 employees who generate worldwide sales of more than EUR 2.8 billion. The sole owner of the holding company SMS GmbH is the Familie Weiss Foundation.