Tata Steel to showcase latest developments at Bauma 2013

Tata Steel’s Lifting and Excavating sector will showcase their latest products and developments at the forthcoming 30th Bauma international trade fair for construction machinery, building and mining equipment in Munich on 15-21 April.

Tata Steel’s £20 million investment at their Clydebridge and Dalzell sites has provided substantial improvements to their Abrazo abrasion-resistant steel range. Suitable for a wide variety of applications, Abrazo is particularly suitable for buckets, truck body linings, chutes, hoppers and conveyor parts, and available in 400, 450 and 500 BHN wear plate grades. The new line up also features guaranteed toughness grades for use in extreme environments. With specified high-impact toughness at temperatures of -40 degrees C, the 400 and 450 grade plate is designed to operate in the coldest climates.

The increase in finished plate width to 3,200mm means that larger components can be produced in one piece, and a new heavy plate press installed at Dalzell improves final plate flatness, which is now better than EN10029 special flatness tolerances. The facility also provides better traceability for products, due to an automatic stamping and marking system.

The project to rebuild blast furnace No. 4 in Port Talbot started in July this year, along with a new £7m high-tensile, heavy-gauge decoiler in Llanwern, mark a major investment in the supply of materials to the construction equipment, lifting and mining industries.

The re-start of the hot strip mill at the Llanwern site in Newport will allow Tata Steel to enjoy the benefits of the state-of-the-art blast furnace while the new high-tensile, heavy-gauge decoiler provides an enhanced levelling capability. This will allow steel gauges from 3mm with improved flatness tolerances, so that original equipment makers get a consistent and reliable product for welding and fabrication.

A larger plate-profiling centre will also be installed at the Steelpark site in Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, which will include new high-definition plasma profiling equipment - capable of supplying the surface and precision-critical components demanded by construction and material-handling equipment makers.

Tata Steel continue to centre their activities on important customer groups, including manufacturers of construction and earthmoving equipment and cranes. This was reflected in the Gold and Silver certification of the processing and distribution operations in India and Skinningrove in the UK, by Caterpillar’s Supplier Quality Excellence Programme (SQEP).

Designed to recognize the companies who deliver benchmark levels of service, the Caterpillar SQEPs have become a watchword for efficiency and effectiveness. 2012 is the third consecutive year that the Skinningrove facility has received a Silver award for its product, while the Tata Steel Processing and Distribution (TSPDL) unit received its first SQEP at Bronze level in 2009. Subsequently, it was recertified as Bronze in 2010, Silver in 2011 and Gold, for the first time, in 2012.

Tata Steel will be at the Bauma show, on stand 512 in Hall A6. For more information, or to arrange an interview with a member of the Tata Steel team, contact Matt Sanger or Marco Ferrari at Automotive PR, on +44 (0)20 7952 1070.