COMPANY INSIGHT

NLMK Clabecq:
manufacturer of premium-quality low alloy
steel plates

NLMK Group is Russia’s largest and one of the world’s leading steel companies, with production facilities in Russia, Europe and the US, and deliveries to more than 70 countries.

Scroll down to read the article

NLMK Clabecq (based in Ittre, Belgium) is specialized in thin plates. The plant offers a product that is renowned for its superior surface aspect, its flatness and its tight thickness tolerances. This is the result of impressive expertise combined with unique production equipment, including the reversible quarto mill and the continuous finishing mill with 4 independent stands on the same line.

With the accelerated cooling system and the quenching and tempering unit (Q&T) are examples of important investments in recent years, NLMK Clabecq is considered as a key player in the niche markets of abrasion resistant steels and steels with very high yield strength.

What is Quard®

Quard® plates are produced at NLMK Clabecq, where they are treated in a state-of-the-art Quenching and Tempering unit. The slabs used are supplied by the NLMK’s Lipetsk production site. NLMK’s abrasion resistant steels are delivered with hardness of 400 HB (Quard® 400), 450 HB (Quard® 450), 500 HB (Quard® 500) and 550 HB (Quard® 550). Those plates are designed for construction and mining equipments (excavators, dump trucks, bulldozers, hoppers, mixers, etc.), as well as for machinery in very demand industries (recycling, agriculture, etc).

Throughout Ukraine, the mining industry’s general debt is estimated to be $18.7m

Ukraine’s miners have protested for years against lack of funds for investment. Credit: LongJon/Shutterstock.

During the first ten months of 2017, Ukraine spent $2.15bn on coal imports

Separatist complications

Solid rocks, hard minerals, mining work is a journey to primary era. When resistance to wear becomes the key factor like in a mining environment Quard® provides the appropriate solution. Thanks to its hardness and its high resistance to wear, the abrasion resistant steel of NLMK Clabecq product lifetime of more than three times compared to the standard marks of structural steel and reduce the weight of the structural element by 40%. The abrasion resistant steel Quard® has proven to have a very long service life, even in permanent use.

More than half of the country’s coal mines are managed by pro-Russian separatist militia. Credit: DmyTo/Shutterstock.

A time for communication

Delivered as wide plates from 1500 up to 3100 mm, Quard® is proposed from 3,2 mm thickness (the thinnest on the heavy plate market) up to 64 mm. This dimensional range covers a high majority of needs. Tests conducted with a panel of selected customers in the industry of construction equipment have demonstrated homogeneity between plates as well as better processing capabilities, such as welding or bending, resulting in improved productivity with lower costs of production in the workshops.

It is essential to pay wage arrears in full [and] stamp out corruption in the industry