The Taranto steel mill is strategically placed as the key of the production cycle of Acciaierie d'Italia and constitutes the core of its activity. It is the sole Italian integral cycle plant, with the capacity of creating new steel straight from raw materials: iron ore and coal. From Taranto are shipped not only the steel products directed to national and international clients, but also coils and other intermediate products dispatched to main parts of works of other units of Acciaierie d'Italia, namely Genoa and Novi Ligure.
Ships dock to the berths managed by Acciaierie d’Italia to load down the raw materials: iron ore and coal that are then sent to storage parks trough a system of transport conveyors, almost entirely covered on all four sides.
Before being utilized in blast furnaces, coal picked up from parks and properly mixed go through a distillation process that transform them into carbon coke, that are then used in blast furnace for the creation of cast iron from the iron mineral.
The iron ore, along with other materials is treated in the sintering plant and transformed into sinter to feed the blast furnace, the very nerve center of the steel cycle.
Blast furnaces produce cast iron, the metal alloy of iron and carbon coke, that in the same plant are made subservient to process and automation control systems, which allow supervision and direction in automatic mode.
Cast iron is a metal alloy mainly composed of iron and a small percentage of carbon. The liquid cast iron is transferred into the steel mill with special rail cars, called torpedo cars. In order to be turned into steel, cast iron has to be depleted of carbon, through a process that uses huge converters into which the liquid cast iron is poured. Oxygen insufflation allows then the reduction of the carbon content.
The liquid steel is transferred to the continuous casting plants where it is poured into ingot molds, inside which the solidification process gests started. The obtained semi-finished product is called slab. Slabs are due to be transformed into hot rolling of different shape and dimension, products similar to reels called coil and in tick sheets called plates.
In Taranto there are three hot rolling plants, two of which produce coil and are called hot strip mills, while the third one produces plates and is called plate mill. The strip train 2 is among the Europe’s biggest.
The thickness of hot rolling products can be further diminished through the cold rolling mill. Hot and cold rolling products can be covered by zinc in the ad hoc plans, to the purpose of providing the final product with adequate resistance to oxidation and corrosion. Those works are executed in Taranto, Genoa and Novi Ligure.
Roils are also devoted to the production of pipes for oil, gas and water. Parte of the hot rolling products of the three tube mills of the Taranto plant is transformed into tubes.
Finished and semi-finished products are shipped to the final clients from the Taranto site through the Tyrrhenian Sea with destination Genoa Cornigliano, or through the Adriatic with destination the Marghera and Ravenna ports.
In order to satisfy typical needs of the applications to which they are devoted, black coils are made with Carbon-Manganese steel (alloy or not) while for more critical usages are employed high-strength low-alloy steels (HSLA).
Black coils can be treated with a process of chemical removing of the surface iron oxide by using hydrochloric acid (pickling) and be traded as “pickled” with a level of resistance equal to that of black coils.
Acciaierie d’Italia produces black coil coils and hot rolling in two lines of production in the Taranto plant.
Main sectors supplied: Constructions - Energy – Transport
Hot rolling coils not directly to the final user are sent to the cold plants where they are pickled, tinned through rolling and, subsequently, re-cocked and tempered to give them the appropriate mechanic characteristics.
The re-cocking process can both be continuous and static, depending on the requested quality. Steels constituting cold coils are as well of the type Carbon-Manganese (alloy or not).
Cold coil and rolls are produced both in Novi Ligure and Taranto.
Main sectors supplied: Automotive – Home appliances
Coils, generally cold rolling, but also pickled, are sent to the hot coating lines to be first re-cocked and then coated, after a careful preparation of the surfaces. The coating, obtained in a continuous process by hot immersion in a bath of molten zinc or aluminum-silicon alloy, warranties a durable protection, making the product usable in a very wide field of applications
Acciaierie d’Italia manages five production lines of coils and hot-dip galvanized strips. The Genoa plant is specializing in the work of low thickness, with Novi Ligure in the automotive.
Main sectors supplied: Automotive – home appliances – Buildings
Tinplate is the most common used material for the production of steel-base metal containers for the food processing industry.
It is made by a thin ‘tender’ plate (with low Carbon content < 0.12%), called base steel, electrolytically coated with a subtle sheet of tin and protected against atmospheric oxidation with a passivation treatment and by a film of natural oil.
The chrome plate is indeed made by a thin strip of steel with low carbon content, but electronically coated with chrome and oxide of chrome.
Main sector supplied: Food – Conservation
Electrically galvanized coils are coated with zinc trough electrochemical laying on both surfaces of coils, or just one of them, so allowing a thinner coating.
The electro-galvanizing process allows to obtain a coating of great chemical purity along with a perfect control over the zinc thickness.
Main sectors supplied: Automotive - Home Appliances
They are Carbon-Manganese steel products with a plain shape and thickness largely lesser than the other two dimensions, that range from 8 mm to 150 mm. Are also produced rolled slabs with thickness between 150 mm and 290 mm. Width ranges from 1 meter to 4.5 meters, whit length from 4 to 25 meters. Shorter dimensions can be obtained by cutting.
Main sectors supplied: Energy – Buildings– Transport
Welded tubes are made with Carbon-Manganese steel (non-alloy or soft alloy) tube shaped, obtained by modeling in the longitudinal way of a plate or strip and the subsequent welding along the same line.
Welding can be executed with a submerged arc welding (SAW) process, with additional material, or with high-frequency electric resistance welding (HFW-ERW) process, with no need of additional material.
Main sectors supplied: Buildings - Energy – Transport
Hollow section non-alloy steel tubes or low alloy are black coil products from hot rolling, pickled coil or hot coated with zinc sheet Sendzimir, with weld seam re-metallization.
They are available in different classic shaping with circular section (also grooved or clover shaped), squared (also with rounded edges), rectangular and special (oval, semi-oval, elliptical). Acciaierie d'Italia also offers the widest range of special section bars, for handrails and fixtures, both for the domestic and international markets.
Main sectors supplied: Buildings
All Acciaierie d’Italia sites employ a Quality Management System to ensure an efficient allocation of resources and the highest possible attention to clients’ needs.
Ensure products compliance with technical and quality requisites
Warrant the involvement and the commitment of the Company Leadership to the effective implementation of the quality principles
Report the quality goals of the Company and set clear control and evaluation indicators for the results achieved, while identifying the causes of possible failures and intervening with promptness and effectiveness
Identify, evaluate and manage the risks that could affect the conformity of products and the quality of the service
Maintain an effective System for Quality Management over processes, products and services, in full compliance to the applicable legal and regulatory requisites
Ensure the availability of the needed resources, information and knowledge, also with recurring activities of training and education
Identify and give account, through operative procedures and practices, of the operative functioning
Measure the clients’ degree of satisfaction and take action on the basis of results of such measurement
Audit activity to verify the implementation, and evaluate the effectiveness, of the Quality Management System and the compliance with the Company policies and the applicable ruthe les and regulations
Select, qualify and evaluate the procurement of products and services with an impact on the ultimate quality of processes and products by engaging suppliers, for their competencies, in the achievement of the Company goals
