Talum (www.talum.si), based in the Slovenian town of Kidričevo, has ordered a continuous ‘homogenising’ furnace and helical ultrasonic testing station from the Austrian company Hertwich.

The new plant, scheduled to start operation in July 2018, will almost double the company’s homogenising capacity.

One of the most important — and expanding — product lines of Talum is aluminium extrusion billets, where the semi-finished range includes AlMgSi alloys.

For the homogenisation of these materials, the Hertwich continuous furnace is said to offer a number of advantages.

Compared with a conventional batch furnace, one of the salient features of the continuous process is the fact that each individual billet is heated uniformly and identically.

Quality fluctuations within a batch, or even across the billet cross-section, are there-by excluded. From an economic viewpoint, the continuous process has the advantage of completely automated work-flow.

Talum installed an aluminium continuous homogenising and sawing line from Hertwich back in 1996. When an expansion of the homogenising capacity became necessary, the contract was awarded to Hertwich again.

The new furnace will have a capacity of 40,000 tonnes per year.