Mexican steel maker Grupo Simec revamps bar mill in Mexicali

16 August, 2018

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Primetals Technologies, an engineering, plant-building and lifecycle services provider for the metals industry, announced it has received an order from Mexican steel producer Grupo Simec S.A.B. de C.V. to revamp the company´s merchant bar mill in the border city of Mexicali, Baja California.

The bar mill will be equipped with a new continuous roughing train in order to increase productivity, improve temperature control and ease maintenance. Furthermore, a new handling area will be set up. This will improve bar straightness, make cutting more precise and facilitate automatic formation of section stacks. These measures will raise overall mill efficiency. Hot commissioning is planned for the fourth quarter of 2019.

Simec is a private mini-mill steel producer that makes an array of non-flat structural steel products such as structural profiles, bars and specialty steels, primarily for the construction, automobile and manufacturing sectors.

The group is the leading special bar quality (SBQ) producer in North America, and the leading structural steel producer in Mexico. Simec has a total installed capacity of 5.2 million metric tons per year, distributed in 19 steel producing and processing plants located in Mexico, the United States, Canada and Brazil.

The merchant bar mill at the Mexicali production size has a yearly capacity of 300,000 tons, with a maximum rolling rate of 60 tons per hour. It processes carbon steel billets with a square cross section of 160 millimeters and a length of 12 meters as well as secondary sizes with cross sections of 136 and 115 millimeters, respectively.

Finished products of the merchant bar mill include rebar with diameters ranging from 9.5 millimeters (3/8") to 38.1 millimeters (1.5"), rounds with diameters between 12.7 millimeters (0.5") to 38.1 millimeters (1.5"), squares, equal and unequal angles, channels and flats. The new roughing train will prepare intermediate unfinished rounds with diameters of 85 and 63 millimeters, which will serve as feeds to the existing intermediate train.

Primetals Technologies is responsible for engineering of the new roughing train and the new handling area and will supply the required process equipment as well as electrics and automation. The mechanical supply includes core equipment for the 60 ton-per-hour pusher-type reheating furnace as well as the furnace charging and discharging areas.

The London-based company is also supplying the lubrication and hydraulic systems, electrics, the basic (level 1) automation, mechatronic packages, Human-Machine Interface (HMI) hardware and software, control desks, motors and drives. For counting bars, a non-optical bar counter will be used. In addition, the supplier will assist the customer with engineering, erection and commissioning work, and provide training services.

The financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

Primetals Technologies is a joint venture of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Siemens. The company employs around 7,000 employees worldwide.

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