Outotec’s $54 Million Kazak Contract to Create World’s Largest Chromite Pellet Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Outotec (Espoo, Finland), formerly Outokumpu Technology, has been securing contracts across its range of applied technologies in 2007. The latest contract for a new chromite pellet plant in Kazakhstan will see the creation of the world’s largest production unit for chromite pellets when the new plant comes into operation in 2009 alongside a similar plant delivered by the Finnish company in 2005.

The $54 million contract from OAO TNK Kazchrome covers services and parts and includes the SBS™ Steel Belt Sintering technology, engineering, the main process equipment, automation and electrification and supervision of equipment installations and commissioning.

Outotec claims that the high chrome recovery rate and an environmentally friendly process combined with the highest production unit capacity available and lowest production cost. Steel belt sintering and the company’s patented preheating method before smelting are key parts of the process. Using pellets with lumpy ore smelting improves the recovery of chrome and increases the average power and utilization rate.

Kazchrome is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of chromite ore, chrome and manganese based ferroalloys. When the second pellet plant comes into operation the production capacity at Kazchrome’s Donskoy complex will double to 1.4 million tons of chromite pellets per annum.

Tapani Jarvinen, President and CEO of Outotec, said, ”Outotec’s energy-efficient ferroalloys production technology is successfully and increasingly used by the major ferrochrome producers worldwide. Kazakhstan is rich in mineral resources, which are being developed fast. After this contract Kazakhstan is the second largest market after South Africa for our ferroalloys technologies.”

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