Fuxin Special Steel orders coil handling system

Fuxin Special Steel Co., Ltd., a stainless steel producer based in Zhangzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian, China, and part of Formosa Plastics Corporation, is going to expand its production facilities by a new hot rolling mill as well as cold rolling mills including continuous annealing line and numerous finishing lines. The supply contract for coil transport logistics between the individual plants was awarded to AMOVA.

The logistics concept covers all coil transport facilities from the hot rolling mill exit end via several coil preparation stations and three cold rolling mills to the continuous annealing line, further via finishing lines up to the high-bay store for shipment. Connection of the hot rolling area to the cold rolling hall will be accomplished through a curved tunnel nine meters in depth and 120 meters long. In the cold rolling area, the hot-rolled stainless steel coils with a maximum weight of 28 tons will be distributed by means of two 600-meter-long rail lines with three respectively four high-speed cars designed for automatic coil picking and placing. About 750 saddle-type coil rests will be arranged along the two transport routes for interim coil storage. All transport functions will be organized and controlled by a warehouse management system.

Fuxin Special Steel had awarded the process line contracts to different manufacturers prior to selecting the coil logistics supplier, and this fact confronted AMOVA with the particular challenge of considering completely different interfaces for the coil transport system. Thanks to the installation of special, flexible load handling equipment at the high-speed transport car, AMOVA succeeded in mastering these interface problems and in convincing the customer of the technical solution.

In addition to the coil logistics, AMOVA is to supply platform cars for the cross transport of rolls, coils and packaging material between the individual bays.

The complete plant is scheduled to be commissioned in mid-2021.