Cuban firm inaugurates Russian-made EAF

Antillana de Acero has inaugurated  a new electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mill in a project financed by a loan from the Russian Federation, according to Nation World News.

The Cuban steel producer considers the project a “total remodeling process of modernization and expansion” that will allow it to produce billets used to make both long and rolled steel products.

Reinier Guillén Otero, general director of Antillana de Acero, tells Nation World News that upgraded EAFs, ladle furnaces, continuous casting machines and automated systems all were part of the recent project.

The same report also cites Vadin Nikolayevich of Russia-based LLC Industrial Engineering Co. as indicating more than 90 percent of all supplied equipment (which weighed in at about 9,000 metric tons) was manufactured in Russia.

Nikolayevich describes the project to Nation World News as a challenge in part because the mill’s previous equipment was provided by the Soviet Union from the 1960s to the 1990s, and many of those companies no longer exist. "This prompted us to rethink ourselves and acquire high-tech modern equipment to revive the lost skills and manufacture high-end quality equipment," Nikolayevich adds.

The renovated mill has the capacity to produce 206,000 metric tons of steel annually and has been ramping up since April, according to the report, which does not indicate to what extent the melt shop will use ferrous scrap, direct reduced iron (DRI) or other metallics as feedstock.

A Russian government official who attended the May inauguration ceremony said the mill would provide steel to be used by Cuban companies “and also contribute to exports, which is why it is of great importance to the Cuban economy.”