Product Innovation and Operational Efficiency

Alongside operational efficiency and excellence, product innovation is an integral element to Qatar Steel’s continued economic success and pursuit of sustainable steel. The company seeks to develop value-added products, working alongside customers to meet their needs and anticipate future trends. These efforts are outlined in Qatar Steel’s Sustainability Roadmap, and centre on four key objectives and partially linked with each other

Product Diversification

Qatar Steel has a long history of successfully developing cutting-edge solutions and diversifying its portfolio over time. The Quality Assurance Department is working across all levels of operations to push for product innovation, mainly focusing its efforts on the development, different grades of rebar, wire rod and billets conforming to international specifications for gulf and export market based on customer’s requirement. In 2019,

• Qatar Steel has successfully developed rebar conforming to Singaporean Standard SS 560:2016 Grade B600B to cater the Singaporean market and this new product was certified by UK CARES.
• Under the new product development initiative, we have also successfully developed another new grade of rebar conforming to Australia/New Zealand standard AS/NZ 4671:2001 Grade D500N to fulfil the requirement of Australian construction industries and this new product was certified by ACRS (Australasian Certification Authority for Reinforcing and Structural Steel Ltd).
• Qatar Steel added one more product to its portfolio by producing rebar conforming to Malaysian Standard SIRIM and the product was successfully certified by SIRIM QAS International Sdn.Bhd

Process Improvement

In the year 2019, various improvement activities were carried out in DR-1 Module were carried out and a preparation for a major shutdown of it has been completed. The following operational improvements include:

• Furnace new dump chutes installation – New Chute was installed to dump the removed refractory from furnace.
• Furnace top hatch floor new platform for refractory work safety- to reduce space constraints during refractory handling, additional platform was provided at bustle area and furnace top hatch area.
• Top gas scrubber area platform was extended to facilitate easy man access.
• Reformer bottom area one platform was erected to provide space for scaffolding materials storing during DR-1 Major Repair

As a major project of electric power factor improvement, 6 units of capacitor banks (each is 5 MVAR) for electrical power factor correction were installed at DR1, DR2, RM1, RM2, main substation and EAF5. This project improved the electrical power factor from 0.85 to 0.99. Opportunities for renewable energy projects such as installing a solar power plant to have redundancy in electricity supplies and to reduce the natural gas consumption in the electricity power generation plants and is under study. Consequently, this collaboration would minimize the quantity of natural gas consumption, electrical power and GHG emission