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Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Ltd was founded in 1960 from the merger of Ishikawajima Heavy Industries and Harima Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd - two firms each with a long history of engineering expertise. Today the company is heavily involved in suppling equipment to a wide range of industries from industrial processing through civil engineering and shipbuilding to jet engines and space development. For the iron and steel industy, IHI offer coke dry quenching plant, blast furnace plant, direct reduction plant, electic arc furnaces, oxygen generating plant, continuous casting equipment, slabbing and blooming mills, plate and hot strip mills, section, bar and rod mills, pipe mills, cold strip mills, continuous process lines (annealing, pickling, cleaning, electrolytic tinning and galvanising), shear and slitting lines, handling equipment and plant and process control equipment. In 1981, iron and steel plant accounted for 8% of the company's net sales and in fact only two years earlier, a new steelworks was opened in Turkey which demonstrated the whole range of IHI's expertise with two electric arc furnaces, soaking pits, reheating and other types of furnaces, bloom and billet mills, bar mills, various cranes and utility facilities.
At the company's Yokohama Complex there is the Yokohama Heavy Machinery Works, the Yokohama Shipyard and the Yokohama Nuclear Compacts Works, together with the IHI Research Institute. The Heavy Machinery Works supplies heavy duty machinery of various types to the steel, automobile and many other industries. In the area of rolling mill production, the works has a 40% share of the total Japanese production and has exported many to South America and Europe. In addition to lifting capacity for erection purposes of up to 180t in a single lift, there is also a 50m long ? 13m wide ? 6m deep pit for the erection of rolling mills and a second 19m ? 24m ? 6m deep for press assembly. The main products are breakdown, plate, hot strip and tandem cold strip mills - not only for steel but also for aluminium and copper, together with auxiliary equipment such as Morgoil bearings.
IHI have developed a new approach to the hot strip mill incorporating several of their own new features including a corner squeezing press, width control, double gear flying crop shear, double chock work...