Danieli to supply new Bangladesh EAF mill

Bangladesh-based Unitex Steel Mills has contracted with Italy-based Danieli & C. S.p.A. for engineering, manufacturing, procurement, supply and installation services for what Danieli calls “a complete minimill” to be installed in the Feni district of Chittagong, Bangladesh.

The scrap-fed electric arc furnace (EAF) mill system will include auxiliary plants for fumes and water treatment as well as what Danieli calls “the most advanced electrical and automation systems” within the mill.

The Danieli MIDA minimill is being designed to produce up to 1 million metric tons per year of long products, including quenched rebar, smooth rounds, equal angles and channels. The companies are targeting a fourth quarter 2024 startup for the mill.

The equipment maker says the Unitex mill “will operate a highly efficient, 100-t Digimelter featuring Q-One digital power feeder and endless casting system (ECS) continuous-scrap charging and preheating systems [that] will competitively melt scrap.”

Other technology supplied by Danieli pertains to digital electric arc control and continuous casting. “Cast billets will be directly hot-charged in a Danieli Centro Combustion 150 tons per hour walking-beam reheating furnace that will be prefabricated and refractory-lined in the workshop to reduce erection time and costs at site,” the company says.

A “merchant rolling mill” will feature convertible stands designed to guarantee production flexibility and also produce small dimension deformed rounds. The bar finishing facility will feature a 90-meter long cooling bed equipped and two 12-meter long single-head magnetic stackers.

“Danieli Automation will supply all electrical equipment, including power distribution, as well as the automation and process control systems Level 1 and 2,” the firm adds.

Unitex Steel Mills is a business unit of Chittagong-based Unitex Composite Mills Ltd. That conglomerate also produces textiles and is involved in the oil and gas sector.