A customer interrupted my presentation at AISTech 2019 — and it was a good thing

AISTech is a special conference for Steele. It’s where we launched our joint venture with TMS International five years ago and it’s always packed with professionals committed to a sustainable steel industry.

So I was honored when I was asked to present on our technology and how it complements sinter — but I was blown away when a customer who uses Steele extruded briquettes stood up before the Q&A and recommended our stiff extrusion solutions to his fellow steelmakers.

The customer, in management with a leading Indian steelmaker, talked about his relationship with Suraj Products Limited (SPL), a company that’s been a Steele customer since 2012. He spoke up because he believes in our technology and its value for mills who want sustainable production.

Here’s what he said about stiff extrusion

This industry professional runs his company’s ironmaking division and oversees multiple high-volume blast furnaces. He told my audience that his furnaces are successfully charging all the extruded briquettes produced at Suraj Products Limited.

When people asked about the size of his furnaces and percentages, he confirmed that they’re charging between 3-5% in a high-volume furnace with great success.  The carbon content in the extruded briquettes has helped the mill cut costs by supplementing imported carbon from Australia.

In the following discussion, some of his peers noted that their blast furnaces are 100 times larger than the furnaces at Suraj Products Limited. The steelmaker noted that his furnaces are as big as theirs and have no issues.

It’s one thing to hear how amazing stiff extrusion is from someone who wants to sell you extruders. A spontaneous, heartfelt testimonial from a customer is something else entirely. This steelmaker was recently recognized for running blast furnaces with industry-leading coke and carbon rates, which means they were already super-efficient.

And now they’re improving on those benchmarks.

A proven technology with simple, reliable equipment

As gratifying as the customer’s comments were, it’s a typical endorsement of steelmakers who use our machines and engineering. That’s why TMS International built a pilot plant for their Extruded Product Services (EPS) in Middletown, Ohio and recently opened a dedicated EPS plant on-site for CAP Acero Steel in Concepción, Chile.

That’s why steelmakers in India, Russia, Asia and South America are turning to our technology. Stiff extrusion eliminates their mountains of accumulated by-products, cuts their carbon consumption and shortens their supply chains, producing engineered, high-quality feedstock on- or off-site.

Stiff extrusion also improves the performance of sinter strands, removing the fine materials that cause problems with sintering. Our extruders work best with minus 3mm fines, agglomerating blast furnace by-products such as fines, dust, sludge, iron concentrates, mill scale and coke breeze.

This is a scalable continuous process and Steele makes extruders ranging in output from 20 MTPH to 80MTPH (we’ll soon be announcing something even bigger). Cold bonding eliminates the need for gas, heating or firing to recover lost iron and carbon units, converting those individual waste streams into a homogenous feedstock for reuse in the melt recipe.