The Ma’aden Rolling Company is a joint venture owned 74.9 percent by Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden and 25.1 percent by Alcoa. The company is building the Middle East’s first fully integrated aluminum smelter and food-grade can-sheet rolling mill in Saudi Arabia. The rolling mill is part of a world-class refinery, smelter and rolling mill complex. First production from the mill is anticipated in 2013.
Four of the cranes, two for ingot handling and two for coil handling, are fully automated. Their automation capability will interface with the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) automation that controls the plant. The order also includes two fork-type stacker cranes, a 35-ton molten metal reclamation crane, and 12 of Konecranes’ newest-generation SMARTON® cranes featuring PLCs (Programmable Logic Controls) as standard equipment. The SMARTON incorporates an impressive array of smart crane features designed to improve safety, reduce energy consumption by up to 30 percent and prevent damage to high-value goods and production equipment.
Both the ingot-handling cranes and the coil-handling cranes must be able to communicate with all of the other automated machineries throughout the plant to complete the rolling process, in which the original ingot becomes a coil just one tenth of an inch thick.
The cranes range in capacity from 20 to 120 metric tons.
