The first week of December entered the history of JSC “Liepajas Metalurgs” with the fact that for the first time during the existence of the company 800 thousand tons production volume is reached since the beginning of the year. The possibility to increase the amount of the produced steel was given by the new electric arc furnace.

With the Siemens-Martin furnaces the amount of steel produced in the year 2007 was 556.8 thousand tons.

We remind that in August last year the most modern electric arc furnace in Europe produced the first heat and during this year JSC “Liepajas Metalurgs” has been working with the new steel melting method.

The head of the production department Janis Jansons is describing the operation of the new furnace: “The furnace listens in the same way as any other equipment – we have to understand how it works and get used to it. During the mastering of the new equipment we become cleverer and can forecast the behavior of the equipment. In our industry field it never happens that already in the first year new equipment achieves the nominal capacity. But the working team of Liepajas Metalurgs is very close to this target already in the first year of operation.

Līga Šenfelde
assistant of chief economist
63455926, shenfelde@metalurgs.lv