Pioneering Plate Mills: Past, Present and Future/An Overview of Plant Mill Market and Technology

摘要

The first high volume requirement for plate was for armour plating of ships during the early part of the 20th century. This thick plate was usually produced on 2 high mills, since thickness and profile tolerances were not a major concern. Today shipbuilding remains a key product for plate mills, but since the J970's these ships have been supertankers. Between 1975 and 1985 alone, 1200 new supertankers were registered, requiring 120 million tonnes of steel. The economics of building these ships are very significantly influenced by the fabrication costs - the fewer the welds, the better. So plate mills have got wider and have been built close to ports, to get around the transportation problems of moving large plates around by road or rail. During the 1970's and 1980's the Japanese economy got stronger and stronger: it's neighbours among the Far Eastern seaboard economies - including South Korea, Taiwan and more recently mainland China - have been growing through the same basic strategy ever since. In China alone, 15 million tonnes of new plate capacity is scheduled to come on line in the next three years.