Valin ArcelorMittal Automotive Co, Ltd. (VAMA), founded in September 2010, is a joint-venture between ArcelorMittal and the Chinese steelmaker Valin Group. VAMA is focused on establishing itself as a premier quality supplier of high-strength steels and value-added products for China’s fast growing automotive market. The new greenfield cold-rolling mill complex will be installed in Loudi, Hunan province, for an annual production capacity of 1.5 million t of steel strip and will include a Continuous Automotive hot dip Galvanizing Line and a Continuous mixte Annealing and Aluminizing Line. Both of these lines will be equipped with Fives Stein’s vertical Digital annealing furnaces and are scheduled to start-up by mid-2014.

Fives Stein is engineering and supplying the complete furnace and related automation systems, including imported key process technologies from Europe and all local manufacturing and supplies in China through its local organization Fives Stein Shanghai which has an experienced team of more than 100 employees. Fives Stein’s vertical Digital furnace technologies were selected thanks to superior performances in high efficiency Digital heating sections and outstanding cooling performances of the patented Flash Cooling® system. A wide range of steel qualities can be processed in the two lines, including mild, high-strength, low-alloyed, IF, Dual-Phase, TRIP and bake-hardening (BH) grades.

In particular, the latest Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) can be processed in the line to respond to the needs of the automotive industry to produce lighter vehicles. Additional operation flexibility is also provided for the mixte Continuous Annealing and Aluminizing Line through specific furnace features and automation system giving VAMA the possibility to produce uncoated as well as coated annealed strips in the same line. The new high added-value coatings will be the first introduced by VAMA in the Chinese market.