SSAB held a grand ceremony for the inauguration of SSAB Swedish Steel (China) Co., Ltd in Kunshan. Mr. Zhang Guohua, Secretary of the Kunshan Municipal Committee of the CCP, Mr Lars Andreasson, Consul at the Swedish Consulate-General in Shanghai and Mr Olof Faxander, President and CEO of SSAB Swedish Steel Group, presided over the inauguration and ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Mr Olof Faxander said in his address at the ceremony, “With the fast development of the Chinese economy, there has been rapid growth in demand for our products. The investment in a new Plate Center in China shows our commitment to this market. Meanwhile, this is also one of the important steps for SSAB Swedish Steel Group’s global expansion strategy.”

Mr Lars Andreasson said, “Kunshan has attracted investment in plant construction by many Swedish companies because of its favorable conditions for investment and amazing rate of development. SSAB, which is a world leader in quenched and tempered steel plate, is setting up in Kunshan and bringing with it new, advanced technology. It is bound to make a contribution in the joint promotion of industrial and economic development.”

The new Plate Center is located in the Kunshan New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone. It will be operated by SSAB’s Heavy Plate Division, which is based in the Swedish town of Oxelösund. The Plate Center occupies a total of 50,000 sq. m., of which 35,000 sq. m. comprises a stockyard. It holds approximately 20,000 tonnes of steel plate, which is close to the capacity at the central stockyard in Oxelösund.

SSAB’s expansion plan is under way in order to meet increasing demand on all markets throughout the world and, in due course, ever increasing volumes of abrasion-resistant steel plate and high-strength steel plate will be shipped to the warehouse in Kunshan, thereby meeting the demand, which is increasing daily, from customers in industries such as engineering machinery, cement, mining, harbors and transport in China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Benefiting from this new Plate Center, Chinese customers will obtain better delivery times and be able to further reduce the volume of stock carried in their day-to-day business.

Mr Olof Faxander said, “The establishment of the new Plate Center is aimed at providing Chinese customers who do not possess processing capability with a streamlined component processing service at a reasonable price and first-class quality and eliminating the inconvenience of looking for a third-party to produce wear parts.”

The new Kunshan Plate Center is a state-of-the-art advanced wear parts processing center. It has high-precision, Messer numerically-controlled plasma cutters and oxygen fuel flame cutting machines and can produce wear parts with a wide range of thicknesses. Since Submerged Cutting technology is employed, the heat affected zone is narrower, the loss of hardness for the whole component can be effectively prevented and the distortion of the cut part can be reduced. Moreover, in accordance with SSAB Oxelösund’s environmental protection policy, the Center is also equipped with a special dust elimination system which can effectively remove smoke and dust during processing.

Mr Zhang Guohua and Mr Olof Faxander jointly started the cutting machines. All the guests of honor present witnessed the arrival in China of the first wear parts from SSAB Oxelösund.