Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has recently re-launched its No.4 sintering plant. Prior to this re-launch, the plant had to be temporarily halted in November 2008 because of decreasing production output.

According to the company’s PR Department, one of the plant’s key challenges lay in keeping as many of the sintering plant’s workers as possible busy and employed during the stoppage. To do this, the plant had to switch to a five-shift working mode, with a portion of workers transferred to No.2 and No.3 sintering plants, the sulfur unit, and the concentrate storage area. In the meantime, the sintering plant’s machinery got maintained by the agglomeration shop’s employees.

‘The agglomeration shop’s task was to improve on the quality of blast furnace agglomerate, and the workers managed to do this successfully by improving the average 65% concentrate to 95% to 97% concentrate last December. Then, the re-launch of the sintering plant was rather smooth, as all the procedures were carried out with a lot of precision and competence. Thanks to our experts’ excellent performance, the sintering plant was re-launched within two weeks’ time,’ MMK reports. All of No.4 sintering plant’s employees (about 280 people altogether) have come back to their workplaces and the enterprise runs three sintering plants once again.