UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 30, 2019. EVRAZ Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) Rail & Beam Department got launched seventy years ago this month, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center reports. 73,000,000,000 kg of goods have been made at the department since the day of the launch. To celebrate the occasion, the company’s best department workers and former, long-service employees got awarded and congratulated on the special date.

‘The construction of the department began during the Great Patriotic War; this was designed to be a very sophisticated production facility 600 meters long and 140 meters wide. Roll Mill 900 and Mill 800 got installed at the department and launched in April of 1949. Later on, the department workers mastered the (then) innovative rail hardening technology that made their rolled goods 1.5 times more durable,’ the Center says.

EVRAZ NTMK Rail & Beam Department now makes nine different kinds of crane rails and railroad rails, channel stock, back frames for the railcar-building industry, spare parts and appliances for tractor manufacturers, and profiled steel. In 2018, a new ball-rolling mill got launched at the department to make Strength Grade 5 grinding balls for the mining industry. The steel balls in question only used to get made abroad before. A decision has been made to keep investing in the department’s tech upgrades in order to start producing sheet piles and structural beams.

There are 820 people working at the department at the moment, most of whom are rolling mill and hot-roll mill operators, pipe and rolled goods straighteners, and heaters.