10 years of technological innovations at TMK

In 2014, TMK completed the bulk of its Strategic investment program, which was started in 2004. During these ten years a large-scale reconstruction was carried out at the company, which led to a complete renovation of production. Having the latest equipment and technologies at its disposal, TMK significantly increased its possibilities on the market. TMK’s chief engineer Alexander Klachkov says about this work and its results.

- Alexander, how do you assess the amount of the work on the modernization, how many such examples are in the company’s history?
- We conducted a huge work - as in scale of construction, as in investment. Even Soyuztrubprom didn’t perform such a global reconstruction at its time. By the way, its greatest achievement of the last Soviet years was the construction of steelmaking and rolling facilities at the Volga pipe plant, which is now a part of our company. At present, we have conducted a series of measures for the reconstruction of the equipment.
And in general, there are almost no such examples on the market, with the exception, perhaps, of Chinese companies because of their scale. Our nearest competitor - Tenaris and V&M - have some major projects, each of the companies launched one pipe mill in recent years. But they didn’t carry out such a complex reconstruction, as we do, and for such a short time.

- How did the technology in steel and, in particular, in pipe production change in the last decade, and how are they implemented at TMK?