ArcelorMittal has produced its first coil on the new production lines at its Mardyck site in northern France, marking a key step in the ramp-up process. Industrial tools and processes will now be refined ahead of full-line validation and first customer deliveries.
The company is expanding its portfolio in non-grain-oriented electrical steel (NOES) and introducing upgraded high-polarisation grades, new self-bonding varnish (SBV) coating solutions, and its latest high-specification low-loss iCARe 420Save grades designed for e-traction applications.
The first coil produced weighs over 17 tonnes and spans nearly four kilometres in length. It passed through the first three lines of the new production chain, the preparation line, the annealing and coating line, and the slitting line. Electrical steels produced by ArcelorMittal across its Mardyck and Saint-Chély-d’Apcher sites in the Lozère region will be used in electric motors and generators in the automotive, wind energy and industrial sectors, the company notes.
“Several months will be needed for the new lines to reach full operational capacity. The skills, know-how and energy of the 175-strong new team, along with feedback and expertise from the ArcelorMittal group, will be the key drivers of success,” the steelmaker says in a note obtained by Kallanish.
The Mardyck expansion is a strategic growth project for ArcelorMittal, tripling the group’s electrical steel production capacity in Europe. Combined with the existing Saint-Chély-d’Apcher facility in the Lozère region, the group’s European electrical steel capacity will reach 295,000t annually. All of ArcelorMittal’s European electrical steel output will be produced in France, “consolidating the country’s industrial ecosystem around electromobility and the energy transition”, the note continues
Electrical steels are used in motors in the form of stacked ultra-thin layers, between 0.2 and 0.35 millimetres thick in automotive applications. They are characterised by a combination of precise magnetic and mechanical properties.
This $500 million investment in the new Mardyck lines is ArcelorMittal’s largest in Europe in the past ten years (see Kallanish passim).
