Arlenico, a special quality wire rod producer located near Lecco Lake, put the new four-stand MEERdrive®PLUS sizing block supplied by SMS group into operation in the existing Caleotto wire rod line. Arlenico is now able to serve the market with products of much tighter tolerances than produced ever before. Thanks to the technologies supplied by SMS group, including a high-tech water cooling line of the latest design and the level 2 automation system, the company can now also apply thermomechanical rolling.

In december, Arlenico officially issued the preliminary acceptance certificate, followed by performance tests on the production of wire rod in diameters from 5.5 up to 27 millimeters in several steel grades at the maximum speed of 115 meters per second, and at low temperature of 750 °C during the following months. Since the first rolling trials, the tolerances as low as 0.05 millimeters and 50 percent ovality have been fully met on 5.5 millimeter diameter product.

MEERdrive®PLUS is a variant of the MEERdrive® technology, a revolutionary drive concept for modern wire rod production. It uses individual drives with small low-voltage motors for each stand. Since all finished sizes are rolled in the MEERdrive®PLUS block, it is possible to realize "one-family rolling" in the rolling mill reducing the otherwise required mill downtimes for size and ring changing.