Second 2,500-tonne press commissioned at Binh Duong

The new press lifts extrusion capacity by 14,000 tonnes a year and takes billet up to 254 mm, which brings large curtain-wall mullions in house.

The second 2,500-tonne press at the Binh Duong plant ran its first commercial billet on 11 August, eleven weeks after the foundation pour. It lifts group extrusion capacity by roughly 14,000 tonnes a year.

The reason for the size is circle diameter rather than tonnage. The press takes 254 mm billet, which covers curtain-wall mullions up to a 320 mm circumscribing circle. Those sections were previously bought in from two suppliers in Guangdong, with the delay and the colour-matching problem that implies when the rest of the elevation is finished on our own line.

The press shares the existing handling line but has its own run-out table and stretcher, so a long structural section no longer blocks the window-profile schedule behind it. In practice that was the more expensive of the two constraints.

Ageing ovens were added at the same time. Total oven capacity is now 96 tonnes per cycle, which is what keeps a press of this size from simply moving the bottleneck one step downstream.