2.3.2005
VÍTKOVICE STEEL supplies its plates not only for big container ships but also for excavators and diggers and other construction machines designed for earth-moving works. While the thickness of shipbuilding plates is between 5 and 50 mm, the thickness of plates for construction machines is between 5 and 200 mm.
Special plates for construction machines are quite new and very interesting products of this Ostrava-based steel company. This year the company expects sales from these supplies higher by 500 mln. CZK than in 2004 – total of 1 billion crowns, which is a 100% increase! The main reason for this planned year-on-year increase is a contract that has just been finalized with a new important customer – a multinational company Komatsu for supplies of approximately 20 000 tons of these products. However, VÍTKOVICE STEEL will continue producing plates also for a renown Swedish company Volvo Construction Equipment, to whom the company supplied the first testing supplies of plates for excavators, diggers and other construction machines some eight years back. ,,For this year we have a concluded frame contract with Volvo Construction Equipment for supply of total of 15 000 tons of plates for construction machines,“ said Jirí Poštulka, a member of the Board of Directors and Commercial Director of VÍTKOVICE STEEL, a. s. ,,In 2003 we supplied to Volvo 13 500 tons of these plates, last year it was 14 200 tons and this year the demand is even higher and furthermore we attracted another big customer – Komatsu,“ added Poštulka.
Thanks to the high demand, plates for construction machines strengthen their position in the total production of VÍTKOVICE STEEL - this year they will assume more than 8% share. ,,We established the first contacts with Volvo to develop our presence on the Scandinavian markets,“ added Poštulka. „And thanks to this cooperation we started producing the above mentioned plates which are subject to stringent quality rules and conditions from the customer in terms of internal parameters of the materials as well as surface parameters. Another important factor for these supplies is perfectly managed logistics. Plates must be dispatched exactly as per the agreed time-schedule.”
Komatsu, with whom VÍTKOVICE STEEL concluded a contract these days which will increase this year’s total supplies of plates for construction machines by almost 50 %, distributes its machines to many European countries, including the Czech Republic. VÍTKOVICE STEEL supplies other job orders to companies for example in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic and Belgium. Implicitly the area of construction machines uses also flame-cut shapes – another special product of this Ostrava-based steel company.
