Fives, a global industrial engineering group, and JSW Dolvi Works, part of India’s leading steel producer JSW Steel, successfully discharged the first hot slab from the reheating furnace on March 31, 2021.

JSW Steel contracted Fives to design and supply two reheating furnaces - Stein Digit@l Furnace® - for their new hot strip mill at Dolvi works in the state of Maharashtra. The furnaces have the highest capacity installed in India to date - each 450 tonnes per hour - and feature high environmental performance and low fuel consumption.

"It required a lot of dedication and continuous efforts from our team to work on site during the challenging period, but we were very determined.”

Chandrajit Sinha, project manager, Fives Stein India Projects

The first furnace was ignited in January 2021. “It required a lot of dedication and continuous efforts from our team to work on site during the challenging period, but we were very determined,” says Chandrajit Sinha, project manager at Fives Stein India Projects, a Fives’ subsidiary in India.

“Our strength was our local manufacturing capabilities and the dedication of our team to work through these difficult times. We achieved more than 85% localization and discharged the first slab in very good conditions without skewness or skid marks.”

Asis Das, head of project management at Fives Stein India Projects.

“We appreciate Fives’ team determination to commission the first furnace in the extreme conditions due to the national lockdown. It’s an important milestone in our cooperation by definition,” says Ashutosh Sharma, project head - hot strip mill at JSW Steel.