ArcelorMittal’s heavy plate mill in Gijón (Asturias, Spain) will supply more than 5,000 tonnes of steel plates to help build a floating hotel for 700 people.
The huge residential complex is being built by the Spanish shipyard Navantia for the Mexican oil company Pemex, which will use the floating hotel to provide accommodation for workers on offshore oil rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
The ‘flotel’ is expected to be delivered by mid-2016.
To make the employees’ long periods at sea more comfortable, the complex will include leisure areas, a conference room, a gym, a healthcare area with sick bay and consulting rooms, kitchen and dining room facilities for everyone on board, as well as offices, changing rooms and workshops. The flotel will also have two large 20m-high cranes with the capacity to hoist up to 20 tonnes.
The vessel will be equipped with a telescopic gangway to allow the employees to easily pass from the offshore operating facilities and it will include a helideck for transport to shore.
The 7,000-tonne vessel will be 131.2 metres long and 27 metres wide. For Navantia, construction will take more than 1 million man hours and more than 150,000 hours of engineering, ensuring a guaranteed two-year workload for the shipyard.
Navantia is a Spanish state-owned shipyard belonging to SEPI (a state-owned holding company attached to the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations).
According to the company’s press release, ArcelorMittal Asturias’ heavy plate mill is the only facility of its kind in Spain. The mill is supplied with steel slabs with a maximum thickness of 28 centimetres, produced at the company’s steel shop in Avilés. After being reheated to 1,000 ºC, the slabs are rolled in successive rolling passes in the four-high mill stand, into steel plates that are up to 22 metres long, 3.3 metres wide and with a minimum thickness of 5 millimetres.
The steel plates produced by ArcelorMittal Asturias have been used by the maritime industry for more than 40 years, supplying ocean liners, trawlers, tankers, bulk carriers, fishing and tourism boats.
Press Release
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