The largest heavy plate production plant in Europe is located in the German region Saarland: Dillinger Hütte. The Dillinger Group is the only raw iron producer in Saarland and produces several million tons of raw iron per year at the plant Dillinger Hütte – of which almost two million tons of raw steel and 1.5 million tons of heavy plate were produced last year alone, as they note on their website.
It takes a whole lot of raw materials to realize these quantities. To ensure that the demand at Dillinger Hütte can be met, two block trains of Innofreight equipment have also been rolling since the end of November. With 168 MonTainers XML, in combination with InnoWaggons 2×30 ft, DB Cargo transports iron ore fines from various ports to Dilligen. A brand-new forklift is used for unloading. In this way a block train, carrying 2,300 tons of ore, can be unloaded daily.
The project will run until the end of February, and during the four-month period around 200,000 tons of iron ore fines will be delivered to the German plant. The project is special because, on the one hand, it was implemented in a very short time and, on the other hand, equipment is in use that would otherwise not be rolling until April 2022, when the second stationary unloading machine at the German steel company ArcelorMittal Eisenhüttenstadt goes into operation.
This demonstrates what Innofreight technology is all about: a high level of standardization with equipment that can be used anywhere – even at very short notice. In addition, the same containers can be unloaded using both a stationary unloading system and our mobile solution.
Innofreight manages to implement effective projects and further improve raw material supply by rail.