The sale of pig iron in pieces and in ingots to Tenaris Tamsa in Mexico takes place with the development of a special shipping procedure that includes the reuse of containers.

From May 9-15 approximately 16,000 tonnes of pig iron were shipped. An opportunity arose in the Contingency Plan to sell the pig iron that remains from the turning of the torpedo car and cannot be processed. The material is stored in stock and usually used like scrap in the steel mill.

It was Ternium Siderar’s first operation carried out for the export of broken down pieces of pig iron, and at the same time it is the first test of material prepared especially for the specifications of tubes producer Tenaris Tamsa’s electric furnace.

The transfer of material to the ship required special elements and an operation where personnel of different areas participated. The port’s dock does not have facilities prepared for a load of pig iron export in bulk. To accomplish this, the baskets were reconditioned—these are containers where the pieces of pig iron and ingots are deposited and subsequently put inside the hold of the ship.

The containers, which had been out of use for 15 years, were a fundamental part of the operation. They were completely disassembled in the port maintenance shop, brackets and supports were reconstructed, and tests were carried out to check the endurance of all components. Each container was also sanded and painted, and chains and lifting systems were purchased for the crains to perform the movement of the containers to put the material in the ship.

Alejandro Laiño, Supply Chain Director, emphasized the creativity and the speed the personnel’s response because “a complex operation was successfully completed with team spirit, repairing an element at a low cost and managing a load at a good contract shipping pace of approximately 4,000 tons per day,” he said.

It is a job that required the effort and interaction of the supply chain, industrial engineering, billing, maintenance, steelmaking, reduction, Exiros and the port operator areas. A task that in slightly more than a month involved selling material in stock, repairing elements like the containers, buying supplies needed and resolving non-routine operations with the port for the material load.