BMZ mastered 10 new steel grades for automotive sector in 2018
Summarizing 8 months 2018 OJSC "BSW - management company of "BMC" holding" ramped up sales of steel products for automotive sector by 23%. Today these products are regularly consumed by more than 20 globally recognized customers, i.e. Mahindra Forgings AG, Hammerwerk Fridingen AG, Schondelmaier GmbH-Presswerk, PAO KAMAZ, AO BelZAN, etc.
In the lead up to Bar & Wire Rod Mill No. 2 start-up Byelorussian Steel Works started entering the list of reputable suppliers to top automotive companies. The enterprise achieved success within this time. Today components for Daimler, VW, BMW, Fiat, KAMAZ, etc are produced from BMZ steel. This result comes from long and rigorous work of technical services of BMZ, which continues actively now. Only this year they mastered 10 new alloyed and carbon quality steel grades for automotive sector: two of them are already in serial production, implementation of other eight – when approved by customers - (full cycle of this may take more than a year) has been scheduled for Q1 2019. In total BMZ mastered more than 30 new steel grades for the last 2 years.
It should be noted that very high requirements are set for steel products for automotive sector: tight tolerances for geometry, purity of steel, no internal and external defects. So to meet customers’ demands fully and ramp up production of high added value products, this year brand new equipment to inspect quality has been adopted by Rolling shop, worth approx. USD1 mln.. Thus, nondestructive surface testing unit was put into operation in Rolling shop №1. It detects defects of depth from 0,2 mm. Rolling shop – 2 received unique equipment so to assess macroscopic purity of rolled product by ultrasonic method. There are no enterprises in Belarus where this equipment is used, and such equipment is available by far not at any steel plant in the world.
Now OJSC "BSW - management company of "BMC" holding" produces a wide product range designed for automotive sector: hot rolled round bars Ø 30 - 160 mm for auto components, rolled product in straight length and in coils which is used to produce springs and special fastening elements, as well as steel products for production of bearings. It should be noted that BMZ (one of the first in CIS) obtained the certificate of conformity with International Automotive Task Force - IATF 16949:2016 on December 2017.