FIVES TO DESIGN NEW REHEATING FURNACE FOR VARDHMAN SPECIAL STEELS

Vardhman Special Steels, one of India’s leading manufacturers of special and alloy steels, entrusted Fives to design and supply a new reheating furnace for its Ludhiana plant, in the state of Punjab.

Reheating technology for new markets
Vardhman Special Steels was experiencing issues with poor billet heating, scale loss, and high emissions from its existing reheating furnace. At the same time, they needed a solution to deliver high-quality products to meet the increasingly demanding requirements of automobile manufacturers.

Fives will provide Vardhman Special Steels with a new walking beam furnace – Stein Digit@l Furnace^® – that will reheat billets with a production capacity of 45 tonnes per hour. The new furnace will increase the productivity of the plant to 300,000 tonnes per year and enable the localization of production and expansion of the business portfolio in Asia and Europe. Production of the first billet is scheduled for April 2025.

New generation burners for greater flexibility
The reheating furnace will be equipped with the latest generation AdvanTek^® burners, which operate at full power and only for the time necessary to cover the heat demand. This advanced combustion system will provide high environmental performance, ultra-low NOx emissions, uniform heat distribution, and operational flexibility.