Danieli is presently commissioning the world’s first DUE® plant at Shougang Jingtang, Caofeidian Industrial Area, Tangshan city, Hebei province, China.

This new concept in thin-slab casting and rolling unifies in a single production line all the winning features that have been demonstrated up to now, using either endless or coil-to-coil rolling in separate production lines while eliminating the limiting factors of each.

The single-strand thin-slab caster is regularly producing slabs reduced from 130 mm (mould exit) to 110 mm (TSC exit), using Danieli’s well-proven Dynamic Soft Reduction technology.

Coil-to-coil rolling is already consolidated production practice as is semi-endless rolling, the latter being the natural step to achieve the true casting/rolling functionality in endless mode.

The DUE® at Shougang Jingtang already has achieved the important milestone of producing the first coil in full endless mode, with dimensions 3.00 mm x 1250 mm, MC grade, after having rolled just 45,000 t of HRC since commencement of hot tests, with mutual satisfaction of the teams.

The unique DUE® layout configuration currently is proving its outstanding flexibility, being capable of performing different production modes.