OOO MMK Trade House (a member of MMK Group) signed an agreement with the Italian Danieli for the delivery of a stretching machine for their coating shop.

The machine’s primary function is to improve the flatness of tin plate. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is currently Russia’s only manufacturer of this particular product. Tin plate is mainly used for making tin cans; about 300,000 tons of cans appear on the Russian market every year, with over 50% of them supplied by MMK.

According to MMK Trade House’s Senior Manager and head of the project on branch and coated metal sales Dmitriy Balandin, some new, highly productive welding facilities have been launched in Russia over the last few years; the new machinery can produce up to 1,200 cans a minute.

‘Given this market’s great potential, MMK Trade House decided to bear the cost of having a stretching machine installed at MMK’s coating shop. The house will finance the delivery using its own profits; the machine will then be maintained by the enterprise itself. Danieli’s equipment is capable of making some 15,000 tons of goods a month. We expect the whole process between signing the contract and the launch of the machine to take about sixteen months. The stretching machine will improve the quality of our tin plate considerably; what is more, the product’s flatness will come to 1.5 to 2 mm rather than to the 5 mm prescribed by GOST 13345-85, the old government standard. The new produce will meet all the European norms on evenness, while the improved quality will encourage better sales,’ MMK reports.

The company’s trade house is now faced with the challenge of selling 160,000 tons of tin plate a year by the end of 2012. The launch of the stretching machine alone is expected to boost sales by about 30,000 tons a year. The Director of MMK Trade House Ilya Melnikov says the launch of the machine is the first stage of a great project on tin facilities renovation. This upcoming overhaul will greatly enhance the quality of MMK’s tin products.