Sidenor Thessaloniki 800,000 tpy merchant bar and wire rod mill revamp

In December 2019, the Sidenor Thessaloniki and Russula team commissioned the merchant bar and two-strand wire rod mill after the automation and electrics upgrade. With an annual production capacity of 800,000 tpy, the mill produces reinforcing bars, squares, rounds, equal angles, beams, UPN channels and wire rod. The goal of the upgrade was to replace obsolete equipment and simplify the control platform, which in turn improved maintenance and troubleshooting.

Scope of Supply

The upgrade scope included all the equipment from the reheat furnace roller table to the bar outlet dividing shear and the reforming tubes of the wire rod outlet. The existing Toshiba PLCs were replaced with Siemens S7-1500 PLCs for both the continuous merchant bar and wire rod mill. Russula supplied new Delta loop
scanners, DC Sinamic drives for the stands, a new main pulpit desk for the control room, an iba data acquisition system and a HMI WinCC interface specifically tailored for the rolling mill process.

Results

The electrical and automation supply were sent in three separate deliveries in May, July and October of 2019. A comprehensive factory acceptance test took place during the week of October 21st where the Sidenor and Russula team made final checks and adjustments to the equipment before the shipment to the plant. Commissioning occurred as scheduled starting the week of December 16th, 2019. The Thessaloniki, Greece plant is one of the oldest within the Sidenor Group (Steel Industry of Northern Greece).