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Upcoming Events in
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Ranchi, India
June 26-28
ARCS13
Visakhapatnam, India
July 11-12
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Newsletter Archive | |
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Read Newsletter #25 in
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 Dear Newsletter Reader,
We are aware that your email inbox is, like ours, probably overflowing.
With that in mind, we thank you for spending a couple of minutes reading one additional email and we hope you will find at least some of it interesting and worth your effort! The feedback we are getting from our readers is not only very useful in our effort to continuously improve, but so far it has been very positive regarding the content of the Newsletters.
In this issue you will read about a great refractory conference recently conducted in South Africa, how the commitment from our team in South Africa can do the "impossible" and how GrafTech's commitment to health and safety can be tracked in the statistics. |
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SAIMM Conference in Muldersdorf
April 23-24, The Southern African Institute of Mining & Metallurgy (SAIMM) hosted the Refractory 2013 conference in Misty Hills, Muldersdrift. South Africa is a major user of refractory materials since it has a strong pyrometallurgical industry and knowledge of refractory materials and concepts, making refractories an important part of the South African economy.
GrafTech's Mr. Hercules Van der Merwe made a presentation titled "The UCAR® Freeze Lining Technology for improved furnace refractory performance." The presentation stressed the fact that Operational Safety should be part of furnace lining configuration, and lining monitoring is an early warning system, concluding that a premature and unpredicted end to a refractory lining campaign can be disastrous and costly. SAIMM showed their appreciation of Hercules' effort by stating that, "Your presence contributed significantly to the prestige of the conference in the Refractories Industry in Southern Africa, your presentation really set the scene for the topic of the conference." We, his colleagues at GrafTech, say: Great job Hercules, and thanks! |
ArcelorMittal Recognition to GrafTech South Africa's, SPD Team
During the past year, the Special Products Department (SPD) team of GrafTech South Africa has faced various challenges regarding short delivery times, but none as tight as material for ArcelorMittal's Blast Furnace C at their Vanderbijlpark Works last December. The team was faced with the manufacturing of 2,792 special shape bricks in only 9 days for the repair of the blast furnace hearth. The material selected was UCAR® CS™ Graphite.
The team started with extensive planning and machine allocation in order to identify the bottleneck for these specific graphite shapes. Some personnel were placed on 12 hour shifts and others worked extended hours. All of the material was closely tracked with constant quality checks, allowing the team to optimize the operation. By having this tracking in place, they were able to determine the exact completion time for each graphite shape. GrafTech had a dedicated truck driver for this delivery and several deliveries were made after hours to ensure that no delay was incurred during the installation process. The order was completed without any safety or quality issues.
After completion of the order, 
ArcelorMittal recognized the efforts of the team with a small token of appreciation. The SPD team is
shown in this photo after the ceremony. GrafTech's Hercules Van der Merwe, who is shown smiling to the far left of the team, says: I want to thank everyone that helped with the successful execution of this order. I sincerely believe that we lived out GrafTech's motto "Redefining limits" by embracing challenges and redefining limitations to deliver quality products on time!
Vanderbijlpark Works is one of the world's largest inland steel mills and the largest supplier of flat steel products in sub-Saharan Africa. The plant employs some 4,500 staff and has two blast furnaces, three electric arc furnaces and three basic oxygen furnaces. Blast furnace C has an inner diameter of 9.1m and a working volume of 1,500 m3: It was blown-in in January 2013 and is currently operating with stable hearth refractory temperatures.
GrafTech's Commitment to Safety Shows in Statistics |
GrafTech's vision is to enable customer leadership better and faster than our competition through the creation, innovation and manufacture of carbon and graphite material science based solutions.
We believe this success depends upon our continued commitment to conduct our business responsibly and in a manner designed to prevent accidents and pollution, and to protect the health and safety of our employees, our customers, and the public.
GrafTech engenders a culture that believes in and strives for "No Harm" to our team members and the environment.
Our commitment to Continuous Improvement
GrafTech monitors best available technology and management practices and remains committed to continuous improvement by measuring its performance against established health, safety and environmental protection goals.
Risk reduction
GrafTech is committed to providing adequate leadership, resources, and training to eliminate or reduce unacceptable risks that are identified at our sites.
Annual health, safety and environmental risk reduction objectives are established and monitored to completion.
The chart below shows how GrafTech's injury rate compares to other industries. As you can see, the result has for several decades moved in the right direction, and by continuing implementing risk reduction, we are confident that we will be successful in lowering this number.
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Mr. Sylvén Celebrating 25 Great Years with GrafTech
In April this year, Refractory Systems' Marketing Director, Peter Sylvén celebrated having been part of the GrafTech team for 25 years. During his GrafTech career, Peter has worked in several different product lines, and joined the Refractory Systems team in 2003. "These have been superb years," he is quoted saying.
Peter graduated in 1982 with a masters degree in Power Electronics from Chalmers Technical University in Sweden. When asked what his greatest achievement has been during these years, he replied, "Raising my sons." He is pictured above with his wife, Dr. LK Sylvén, an Associate Professor of linguistics, who claims most of the credit for raising their sons.
We thank Peter for his valuable contributions so far. He can be contacted at peter.sylven@graftech.com. |
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GrafTech, HotPressed, ChillKote, C34, GR37, Grade D, NMA, NMD, RP4, SmartRam,RefractoryFlex, FlexLine, and FlexRepair are all trademarks of GrafTech International Holdings Inc. UCAR® is a registered trademark used under license by GrafTech International Holdings Inc. The information contained in or referred to in this newsletter is based on data believed to be reliable but GrafTech makes no warranties, express or implied, as to its accuracy and assumes no liability arising out of its use. GrafTech's liability to purchasers is expressly limited to the terms and conditions of sale. ©2013 GrafTech International Holdings Inc.
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