Mantova/Yangzhou (hgd). Marcegaglia opened its first Asian manufacturing plant in Yangzhou, China on April 19, 2011. The opening ceremony was attended by Chinese government delegates and over 900 guests from all over the world.
The plant is the most important investment an Italian company has made in China during last ten years as well as the largest production facility for high precision steel tubes in the country. The new unit has been designed to serve the production districts of the domestic Chinese market as well as the Asia-Pacific region. It has a total area of 714,000 m2 and at full capacity will employ about 500 workers. The plant is dedicated to the production of stainless and carbon welded precision tubes and has a production capacity of over 400,000 tonnes
which will eventually contribute to an expected total turnover of 500 million euros, following an initial investment phase of 160 million euros.
Marcegaglia in brief
Founded in 1959, the group is fully owned by the Marcegaglia family, with Steno Marcegaglia as Chairman
and Mira, Antonio and Emma Marcegaglia as CEOs. Headquartered in Gazoldo degli Ippoliti (Mantova, Italy)
the group is divided into seven business areas: steel, building, home products, engineering, energy, tourism and services.
The new Marcegaglia plant in Yangzhou has a total area of 714,000 mq, 153,000 mq of which is covered
by the plant and 4,200 mq by the modern office building (photos: Marcegaglia).
Marcegaglia Yangzhou Plant
The Yangzhou Plant
The new production plant is located in the Guangling Industrial Park in Yangzhou and has a total area of 714,000 mq, 153,000 mq of which is taken up by the plant, with 4,200 mq for a modern office building. Built
in a single phase, the plant was constructed in just 11 months: from April 2009 to March 2010 – a product of Italian and Chinese expertise, made using high-quality structural steel, it also features the most advanced
acilities in terms of safety and environmental standards.
 «The investment here in Yangzhou was planned less than three years ago,» Antonio Marcegaglia, CEO of the group, proudly explains. «It was eventually decided some two-and-a-half years ago, and the first construction phase commenced only about one-and-a-half-years ago. Everything proceeded straightforwardly with contained
costs, highly professional subcontractors (including Chinese companies), and with maximum support from the Government. So just three years have passed since we first started thinking seriously about the project,»he continues, «and today we are producing in a huge building, actually the largest building ever constructed by Marcegaglia in a single step. We do have larger plants within our group, but they were built in several phases throughout the years.»
At full capacity about 400,000 tonnes of special tubes made of stainless and carbon steel, welded and cold-drawn, will be produced at the Yangzhou plant annually, 200,000 tonnes of which will be carbon steel tubes, 100,000 tonnes cold-drawn tubes, 70,000 tonnes stainless steel tubes, 30,000 tonnes refrigeration tubes and other types manufactured for industrial applications in the automotive, energy, precision engineering and hydraulics industries, for example.
60 % of the production in Yangzhou is intended for manufacturing industries in China. The country is the world’s top consumer of high-quality steel tubes and currently relies entirely on imports. The remaining 40 % are intended for Asian and Pacific markets such as those in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Korea.
176 workers are currently employed in the new manufacturing plant in Yangzhou. By the end of this year the number will have grown to about 390 and finally, at full capacity, over 500 employees will work at Marcegaglia China. Turnover is then expected to reach 500 million euros.
The plant is equipped with eight tube welding lines, three pointing units, two coil slitters, two drawing benches, two ultrasonic inspection units, two straightening lines, a
line for orbital cutting, a normalization furnace and an automatic pickling plant.
The city of Yangzhou, 370 km from Shanghai and with a population of about 4 million, is among China’s fastest-growing industrial cities with a well developed infrastructural network, motorways and high-speed railways, a river port and a modern airport that will start operating next year.
Flat products are a growing challenge for Marcegaglia
With the strategic development of its own production value chain in mind, Marcegaglia has installed new processing lines for stainless steel coils and sheets at its headquarters
in Gazoldo degli Ippoliti (Mantova, Italy). Hot rolled steel (1D finish) with thicknesses of from 2 to 6 mm (annual capacity: 500,000 tonnes) and cold rolled steel (2B finish with an annual capacity of 250,000 tonnes) are processed on two annealing and pickling lines as well as two cold rolling and skin pass lines. This new product range enhances Marcegaglia’s role as a global partner for manufacturers who engineer solutions in the building sector , in all process sectors (including food and beverages), as well as in the automotive and mechanical engineering sectors.
Flat products also means carbon steel for Marcegaglia. The Ravenna plant, Marcegaglia’s largest processing complex, has recently been upgraded – doubling the group’s global capacities to 2.5 million
tonnes per year for cold rolled products and 2 million tonnes per year for galvanized steel.
The group’s pre-painted flat capacity has also been doubled by recent investments and is now at 500,000 tonnes per year, with more than 20 organic painting cycles and the capability for double-sided painting. This is useful for a specialized production dedicated to applications including the white goods sector, packaging, building and construction.
Marcegaglia – an industrial group active internationally
Marcegaglia is an entrepreneurial success story that has made the group an industrial leader in stainless and carbon steel processing, with about 5.5 million tonnes of steel products processed annually (estimated-- figure for 2011) and one of the world’s largest product ranges regarding breadth and variety.
Marcegaglia is basically an Italian company, but nonetheless a global player in the most important international markets such as Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Russia and China. The group owns operations worldwide with 7,500 employees, 51 sales offices, 210 representatives and 50 aanufacturing plants. These plants cover 6 million mq of land worldwide and manufacture about 5,500 km of carbon and stainless steel products every day, serving more than 15,000 customers.
Marcegaglia’s activities in steel, which account for 88 % of its turnover, and the activities in other business areas, which account for the remaining 12 %, are expected to generate a total turnover of 5.0 billion euros in 2011. The company estimates that by 2013 this figure can be increased to 6.0 billion euros. (EE 110202144)
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 A real global player
source: Stahlmarkt European Edition
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