Tokyo Steel Manufacturing’s Kyushu plant expands variation of specification for plate products to meet various needs of the users. The plant finished development of high tensile shipbuilding grade plate with 490 kilonewton and 75 millimeters thick plate in fiscal 2011 ended March 2012 and started commercial production. The plant tries to develop new range of products and applications in shipbuilding, industrial and construction machinery and construction under severe business condition.
The firm combined the component design at steel making shop and cooling technology at rolling mill to make high tensile plate. The firm had SN490C grade with 490 kilonewton of tensile strength. The firm now developed such high tensile shipbuilding plate based on ClassNK. The firm realized better corrosion resistance through arrangement of alloy component along with the better flatness and quality. The firm expanded the plate thickness from 60 mm to 75 mm to serve building and industrial machinery. The firm realized the thick plate from 150 mm thick slab. The firm gets more order for the thick plate products. The plant introduced 130 tonnes direct current electric furnace, which was the first direct current type for the firm, while the plant is only plate making plant in the company. The plant also makes larger sized H-beam. The plant has total annual 1.5 million tonnes of rolling capacity including 500,000 tonnes of plate and 1 million tonnes of shapes compared with 1 million tonnes of raw steel output capacity. The plant plans to increase the plate production by 70,000 tonnes to 450,000 tonnes in fiscal 2012 from fiscal 2011. The H-beam production will increase by 100,000 tonnes to 400,000 tonnes.