Company Brochure - Dillinger Hütte GTS

DILLINGER HÜTTE

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Dillinger Hütte
History
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The plant
Product range
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Pig iron
Environment
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Crude steel
Investment
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Slabs
Research
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Heavy plate
Service
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Quality
Communications
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The Saar Harbor
Sales
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The Dillinger
Hütte Group
Semi-finishing
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Our staff

View from our guesthouse.

1685
Louis XIV grants royal
approval for the founding
of Dillinger Hütte.
1690
Production now includes
pig iron, nails, pots and
pans, and stoves.
WHAT DO THE SUN KING AND KAISER WILHELM II
HAVE IN COMMON?
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1809
On the basis of the Code Napoleon, the
plant becomes one of the first European
joint-stock companies and, in the years
following, Prussia‘s largest plate producer.
1800/01
First gold medal for quality
at the Paris Exhibition.
Still more awards follow.
1835
The “Dillingen sheet and plate gauge”,
with 24 thickness gradations for
steel plate, is adopted as the definitive
measure throughout Germany.
1828
The company issues detailed
guidelines for corporate social
benefits.
1948
Merger with French steel sheet
producers to form SOLLAC
(Société Lorraine de Laminage
Continu).
1897
Europe‘s first electrically
driven steel sheet rolling
mill is commissioned.
1961
The world‘s first continuous
slab caster is capable of casting
slabs of 1,500 mm width and
200 mm thickness.

1968/69
Commissioning of the new BOF
plant with its two top-blowing
converters.
1971
New rolling mill with a 4.8 m wide
rolling stand permits unusually
large product dimensions.
An affinity for Dillinger iron and steel. In 1685, Louis XIV gave his “Oui” to iron production at Dillingen, whereas
Kaiser Wilhelm II had the steel plates for his navy made here. Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, Dillinger
Hütte is a modern industrial group that leads the world in the production of heavy plate. Nonetheless, traditional
values such as reliability and trust still have the very highest priority for us. We apply technical perfection,
love for detail and enormous enthusiasm to even the very largest challenges. The following tour of our plant
shows you how.
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1985
Construction of a new blast furnace
and expansion of the rolling
mill with the new, high-performance
5.5 m-wide rolling stand.
1981/82
Formation of Roheisengesellschaft Saar mbH
(ROGESA, “Pig Iron Company”) and Zentralkokerei
Saar GmbH (ZKS, “Central Coking Plant”).
1998
Construction of the world’s
largest continuous slab caster.
1993
GTS Industries becomes a 100 %
subsidiary of Dillinger Hütte.
2003/04
Construction of a gas-powered
generating plant for sustainable
energy utilization and optimum
environmental safety.
1999/03
Steelworks and blast furnace investments
assure continued technological edge
and maximum steel purity.
Prospects for the future:
The success story continues.

WHERE IS THE OUTLOOK GOOD
EVEN WITHOUT WINDOWS OR PLATFORMS?
In our plant. The outlook for obtaining optimal, tailor-made steels is great, thanks to our highly professional
steelmakers and ultra-modern technology. At Dillingen, the customer, blast-furnace operator, steelworker,
rolling-mill operator and sales manager are brought together around one table. Orders are painstakingly
discussed down to the last detail. If new and innovative solutions are needed, we find them through cooperation
with our researchers and experts from the various plants. Each can depend 100% on the other – that’s the
only way to achieve the quality that makes us world famous.
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Heavy plate – for us, this product signifies a broad range of dimensions and a minimum of 2,000
grades of steel. We develop steels with the most diverse ranges of properties to ensure their precise
suitability for use in bridges, high rise buildings, offshore platforms and drilling rigs, ship building,
large-diameter line pipes, boilers, pressure vessels, construction machinery, heavy-duty machines,
wind farms and much more, too. A steel may only include the “Di” prefix in its name once it has
attained the status of a trademark Dillingen product. Our Dillidur and Dillimax trademark steels
have become world famous. And many of our other steels, such as Dicrest, Dimo and Dipro, have
also made names for themselves – names that experts rely on around the world.
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Europe’s tallest office block
(298.74 m) can be found
in Frankfurt am Main.
Star architect Sir Norman
Foster’s masterpiece is a
daring blend of concrete,
glass and Dillingen steel:
DI-MC.

WHERE CAN YOU FIND THE “DEAD MAN”?
In the center of the blast furnace (it’s a pyramid of coke that acts as a distributor of gas). The blast furnaces in
our hot-metal plant are state-of-the-art. Their massive outlines may be reminiscent of a past century, but in
reality they are ultra-modern production facilities. High-tech systems monitor and control the processes in
their hot core and its surroundings. In addition, the composition and properties of the burden (the material
fed into the blast furnace) are submitted to continuous, ultra-strict checks – a vital step in achieving the topquality
steel that we pro -duce.
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Environmental protection is an especially important factor in in dustrial
production. Our company‘s environmental standards define environmental
protection as an integral component of corporate po licy.
Provisions include, for example, closed cooling-water circuits and the
almost complete forwarding of by-products and residues to other industries
(for instance, energy and construction) for environmentally safe
use, or for recycling back into our own production cycles. Steel itself is
a natural material and is 100 % recyclable.
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The imposing Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam is actually two
bridges in one: a 410 m long cable-stayed suspension bridge
and an 89 m-long flap bridge, the latter widely considered
to be a masterpiece of flap-bridge engineering. And it’s all
made possible by an ultra-modern structural steel: DI-MC.

WHICH WASHING CYCLE OPERATES
AT 2000 °C?
The oxygen top-blowing process in our steelworks. This is where undesirable „tramp“ elements originating
from the ore are eliminated and the liquid iron (re ferred to as “hot metal”) is converted to crude steel. Correct
and precise alloying of raw steel is a precon dition for attaining steel‘s optimal properties. Ultramodern technology
enables us to adjust the very smallest alloying-element contents to a precision of four decimal places –
which in practice means the achievement of a boron or titanium content accuracy of just 2 kg in 185 tonnes
of melted steel. Oxygen treatment in the converter (“refining”), and secondary metallurgical ladle treatments
in our vacuum facilities, assures attainment of ultra-clean steels.
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Every year, we invest around 50 million Euro in the latest technology
and research, to keep us constantly at the leading technological
edge, and to enable us to improve and expand quality and
product specifications. Our plant and equipment are serviced
and maintained by the people who work on them, assisted by
our dedicated, highly specialized maintenance departments. The
benefits: avoiding disruptive problems and assuring uninterrupted
production.
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In the Gulf of Mexico,
in waters 535 m deep,
one of the highest offshore
structures ever
built defies the forces
of nature: the Petronius
Tower. To keep it stable,
the 564 m-high tower
has to be able to move
with the motion of the
wind and waves.

WHICH TOP PERFORMER
IS AT ITS BEST AT THE BOTTOM?
Our vertical continuous caster. This machine enables us to produce clean, porosity-free, homogeneous steels
throughout a slab thickness range up to 400 mm. The secret: so-called “soft reduction” – the strand shell is
compressed during casting in such a way that a material cross-section with absolutely homogeneous properties
is achieved through to the center of the slab. For extra thick and heavy plates, we use the traditional ingotcasting
method, with ingots of a maximum weight of up to 63 tonnes, and a thickness of up to one meter.
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Our research activities are the source of our new products and production
refinements. Internal departments and a range of laboratories
work continuously to optimize production techniques and develop new
heavy- plate production methods and technologies. And our scientists
don‘t need to travel much, either. Their experiments and tests are performed
near our production plant, with the extra benefit that the results
can quickly be translated into new and improved production practice.
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How big must an earthmover
be to earn the name
“the world’s largest hydraulic
excavator”? Answer: 24.9 m
high and 8.6 m wide, and
equipped with a bucket
whose capacity of 42 m3 is
sufficient to accommodate
a whole class of school
children. DILLIMAX.

WHO RUNS THE WORLD‘S
MOST POWERFUL MOTORS?
The Dillingen rolling mill, with its superlative spe cial equipment. Electric motors with torque ratings of 4950
kilonewton meters each (equal to the power of around 20,000 cars) drive the 5.5 m four-high mill, the most
powerful rolling stand anywhere in the world. Thick slabs can be rolled with constant precision to any plate
or strip thickness required, with a rolling force of up to 108 meganewtons. Thermomechanical rolling is a
Dillingen specialty. This process imparts not only the geometry of our heavy plate, but also its mechanical
properties, such as strength, toughness and hardness.
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What service means to us: intensive customer liaison and mutually trusting and
cooperative partnership, combined with a broad range of semi-finishing procedures.
We have multiple advisory teams specializing in the diverse requirements of our various
groups of customers. Our exceptionally broad range of formats and enormous
selection of grades are the basis for our individual service packages. In many cases, we
are awarded highly complex orders simply because we are the only supplier with the
necessary capabilities – an enormous compliment to our skills.
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At sea, too, Dillingen plate is superlative: The giant ocean liner Queen
Mary II is the world’s largest passenger ship, with a length of 345 m, a
height of 72 m, and a beam of 41 m. The ship provides 2,620 guests with
numerous and diverse opportunities for on-board recreation. DIMARINE.

DOES THE PLANT HAVE A HALL
OF MIRRORS?
Naturally. The mirrored room at Dillinger Hütte takes the form of the cooling and inspection beds. After surface
inspection, ultrasonic methods tell us the quality of the center of our heavy plate. Chemical and mechanical
procedures are used to register other important quality-relevant criteria. Continuous in ter nal production monitoring
thus ensures the constant high quality of our plate products. An all-encom passing and certified quality
management system and a proactive Total Quality Management culture are part of our everyday working life.
All this enables us to supply our customers with precisely the steel they ordered, every time – as we document
in detail on the material test certificate!
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Every order is an obligation to perform. At Dillinger Hütte, however, we always want to do more
than “just” supply the product. The solution: cooperative partnership with our customers. An
important channel for this is frank and open communication, via our www.heavyplate.com
communication and service platform on the Internet, for example. Here, our customers can obtain
information about their orders at any time, and request deliveries. But despite all the modern
media now available, we never forget the importance of personal contact with customers – we
know that customer relations grow on a person-to-person foundation. And that’s what we find
so exciting.
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What eats its way through the earth,
played a decisive role in the construction
of the fourth bore of Hamburg’s
Elbtunnel, and has a cutting shield
with a diameter of 14.2 m? Right –
“Trude”, the world‘s largest tunnel
boring machine.

WHAT CRUISE ON THE SAAR
OFFERS THE BEST VIEWS?
The scheduled and charter trips from the Saar louis/Dillingen harbor on the Saar. Apart from the crews, however,
only raw materials on their way to the plant and finished products for delivery around the world can enjoy
the marvelous scenery on the banks of the Saar. Alongside Europe‘s rail infrastructure, the harbor is our direct
link to the North Sea ports. With technical facilities that make it one of Europe’s most modern, Saarlouis/Dillingen
harbor handles some three million tonnes of freight each year. A special logistics department ensures
trouble-free shipment by water, rail and road, and is responsible for trans mission of the associated shipping
and loading data – yet another sector in which top performance is an everyday fact of life.
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As a well-established and globally active producer of heavy plate,
Dillinger Hütte has its own, tightly organized Sales & Marketing team.
Local sales staffers are in daily contact with their customers. Their colleagues
in the central Sales and Marketing departments support them.
Existing and potential customers value their dependable ex perience and
know-how.
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Despite their deserved fame for flatness, Dillingen plates handle
curves just as capably. In gigantic cylindrical storage tanks for high-
pressure liquefied gas, for example. This facility, at Leuna, Germany,
is one of Europe’s largest, with a capacity of 22,500 m3. DICREST.

WHERE IS IT NOT LONELY AT THE TOP?
In our group. With its subsidiaries, Dillinger Hütte is Europe‘s largest manufacturer of heavy plate. We produce
and sell around 2 million tonnes of plate each year. In addition to our Dillingen headquarters – also the lo cation
of the Zentralkokerei Saar and Roheisengesellschaft Saar production facilities – and the GTS Industries rollingmill
at Dunkirk, France, the group also includes a whole series of primarily European enterprises furnishing the
most diverse range of services for heavy plate. These include stockists and flame-cutting establishments, as
well as large-caliber line pipe manufacturers, sales com panies and freight organizations. This is our concept of
the integrated supply chain – from the ore up to the fully finished product.
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Dillinger Hütte, in partnership with other group companies, can provide numerous services
and processes for finished plate. The spectrum ranges from edge-machined plates via
precise, to-the-millimeter flame-cut components, dished trays and vessel ends in all wall
thicknesses, spherical segments, up to and including pressings and longitudinally welded
vessel-shell components. We can also perform trial assembly – we have the necessary faci lities,
staff and know-how. In short, we can do everything that our customers either can’t or don‘t
want to do themselves – it’s that simple!
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DILLINGER HÜTTE GTS, the major
European heavy plates producer,
intends to achieve highest performances
in steel together with
its customers and associates.

COULD THERE BE A MORE ELOQUENT
COMMITMENT TO ACHIEVEMENT?
Hardly. Top performance results from optimum interaction between people and technology. Fascina ting hightech
plants are only the foundation. Down the generations, the basis for success has been the teams that
master plant operation, provide customers with highly competent advice, and complete orders to our customers’
total satisfaction. People who accept the competitive challenge – in sport and at work, as a team – and
give their best, together, every day. With the will to innovate, with enthusiasm, and with commitment and
pleasure in achievement.
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“Our task, together with our staff, is to shape the
future.” The Dillinger Hütte Board of Management
stresses that commitment.
WE
MAKE
THE
STEEL

Published by:
AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke
Postfach 1580
D-66748 Dillingen/Saar
Germany
Telephone: +49 (0) 68 31/ 47-0
Telefax: +49 (0) 68 31/47-22 12
E-Mail: info@dillinger.biz
http://www.dillinger.de
Conception and design:
Scholz & Friends, Berlin
Wolfgang Schmitt, Dillinger Hütte
Photography:
Georg Becker, Saarbrücken
Uwe Braun, Dillinger Hütte
Printed by:
Krüger Druck+Verlag, Dillingen
Disclaimer:
Information and data on the properties, quality and utilizability of materials and products shall be deemed to
constitute only descriptions. Any and all guarantees concerning quality and/or durability, etc., with respect
to the presence of specific properties or suitability for a specific application shall in each case be deemed to
require special separate written agreement.
Special thanks to our customers:
Chantiers de l’Atlantique
DSD Dillinger Stahlbau GmbH
Europipe, Mülheim
Herrenknecht AG
O&K Orenstein & Koppel AG