JFE Steel announced on Monday the firm started operation of original bending press machine at UOE pipe plant of Fukuyama area in West Japan works in early October to make world thickest class high strength steel pipe. The plate mill at Fukuyama already converted the cooling system in March to provide wide plate for high valued UOE pipe. Through the 6.5 billion yen of investment, the firm targets annual 300,000 tonnes of high valued UOE pipe sales in fiscal 2012 starting April 2012, which is 3 times of current level.
The press machine has 10,000 tonnes of press capacity to make thicker high strength UOE pipe. The machine can make American Petroleum Institute (API)’s X70 grade pipe with 45 millimeters thick and X80 grade pipe with 40 mm thick compared with former 34 mm thick for X70 grade and 33mm thick for X80 grade. The plate mill at Fukuyama started operation of the cooling system, Super-OLAC-A (Advanced), which is improved version of Super-OLAC (On-Line Accelerated Cooling). The system can make low-temperature toughness grade plate with better deformability and high strength along with better weldability. Energy development condition gets severer for natural gas and oil to meet growing world energy demand. The transportation needs better performance steel pipe for better cost performance and higher pressure operation. The transportation also requires pipe with better resistance for frozen soil and other severer conditions. Through the investment, JFE Steel can make high grade UOE pipe in better size variation to meet the energy industry’s requirement. The firm tries to expand the supply of high strength UOE pipe with better deformability and with sour resistance.