Steel slabs became the most popular cargo in the Mariupol commercial port
Slabs are one of the most common cargoes handled by the port of Mariupol. Over the past 3 years, their share in the total cargo turnover of the Mariupol port has been about 50%. In 2019 alone, 2 million 824 thousand tons of slabs were shipped through the enterprise to eight countries of the world: Belgium, Great Britain, Greece, Egypt, Italy, Turkey, France and Croatia. And to date, in 2020, 2 million 750 thousand tons of slabs have been sent from the port.
What is a slab? And about. port director Igor Barskiy, showing the territory of the enterprise to a representative delegation, jokingly called the slabs metal chocolates. Indeed, the slab is very similar to this delicacy in its shape. In fact, this is a semi-finished product of metallurgical production - a thick steel billet of rectangular cross section with a large ratio of width to height. Slabs are obtained from ingots by rolling on crimping mills, then they are called rolled, or from liquid metal on continuous casting machines - cast.
What are slabs for? For rolling sheet steel. One of the world's largest manufacturers of commercial continuously cast slabs, which are used as a billet for the production of flat sheet or coiled rolled products, is the Mariupol iron and steel works Azovstal and Ilyich.