Baosteel Shanghai’s wire-rod mill has been successfully hot-commissioned within 46 days of rebuild.

CISDI undertook the plant re-design, plus package supply of spare parts for the reheating furnace and mill.

The largest integrated upgrade of Baosteel’s wire-rod production plant in two decades, product structure has been optimised and production increased to 550,000 tonnes of plain wire rods a year.

Baosteel Shanghai’s wire-rod mill was founded in 1999 to produce coils 5mm to 25mm in diameter, plus cords and other small sections below ø6.5mm. Its main focus was automobile and mechanical wire rod and the mill had an annual production capacity of 500,000-550,000 tonnes.

At the time it was one of the world’s leading mills and CISDI undertook the plant design for its initial construction.

Today’s rebuild is to meet the changing market and demand for new product requirements.

Specification has been maximised to a diameter of 28mm and the product range meets the needs of the medium and high-end automobile sector - spring steel, cold-headed steel and bearing steel, high-end cord steel, cut wire and high-strength bridge cable.

Thermo-mechanical control process (TMCP) has been applied to the rebuilt line. The roughing mill and intermediate mill trains have been modified to the new high-strength, short-stress path rolling mills.

The pre-finishing mill train has been upgraded to the new-generation heavy mills. The finishing mill train and reducing and sizing mill have been upgraded.

In addition, the plant is better able to control the internal and surface quality of the final product thanks to an optimisation of the water cooling temperature control system and the laying head and Stelmore line units have had their capacity increased.

Electric and automation control, hydraulic and lubrication, power supply and distribution systems, roll shop facility, civil and utilities have been modified correspondingly.