Italian plantmaker Danieli has announced that it has received two orders worth over $650 million from US-based Nucor Corporation group. Danieli underlined that the order is the largest worldwide in the last twenty years in the field of machinery and automation.
Nucor has selected QSP-DUE Danieli Universal Direct Rolling technology for a new greenfield installation in West Virginia to produce quality hot strip and cold strip rolling and processing technology for two cold strip projects.
The QSP-DUE Danieli Universal Endless plant will produce 3 million mt per year of quality hot rolled strip in the widest range of steel grades and most flexible way; strip dimensions will be up to 2,100 mm wide and from 0.8 mm to 25.4 mm thick. Danieli QSP-DUE is the only technology that allows coil-to-coil, semi-endless and endless modes to be performed in a single line. This will be the first thin-slab casting rolling plant also to produce automotive-exposed grades, allowing Nucor to operate without steel grade limitations.
The plant will be managed by Danieli Automation's advanced process technologies and artificial intelligence. The two cold strip projects awarded to Danieli will result in additional flat-product finishing capacity for the largest US steelmaker.
A second order for cold strip technology is for a galvanizing line and a color-coating line to be installed at the existing Nucor Steel Crawfordsville plant, Indiana, to serve markets for steel buildings and home appliances.
Danieli Automation will provide advanced process control systems to supervise operations, running the lines in automatic mode, guaranteeing quality and production consistency.
The startup of these plants will begin in mid-2024, with operation by the end of 2024.
Meanwhile, Danieli is currently upgrading the Nucor Steel Gallatin plant from CSP to QSP technology; the full start-up of this QSP plant is expected by April 2022. This original Danieli technology applied at Gallatin will be the first in the US.