Sumitomo Metals to Finish High Grade Large Diameter Pipe Expansion

Sumitomo Metal Industries completes 10 billion yen of expansion of large diameter welding pipe at Kashima works in the year to make more high strength products with more than X100 grade. The works already started the operation of new pipe expanding machine for high strength line pipe in September 2009. The works starts operation of a renewing Sumitomo Dynamic Accelerated Cooling (DAC) machine at the plate plant in the year.

The new expanding machine has around 1.5 times of power compared with existing machine to process higher strength plate. The machine can expand the plate with equal pressure to 8 directions from inner part of the pipe. The DAC enables the mill to make plate with higher strength and toughness for high strength pipe.

The firm tries to expand the supply capacity of high strength large diameter pipe with American Petroleum Institute (API) X100 and hither grade for worldwide natural gas pipeline projects. Oil major companies shift to higher performance steel pipe to improve the transport capacity in order to reduce transport cost when X100 grade pipe can reduce the pipe weight by 20% from X80 grade.

Pipe makers in China and Russia also try to expand the high grade pipe up to X80 grade. Sumitomo Metals tries to expand the output capacity of X100 and higher grade to distinguish itself from the rivals.