The history - from ISP to ESP
ISP (In-line Strip Production) technology is an innovative technology conceived at the end of the 1980s within the Group and developed and industrialised in the early 1990s on the plant built at Acciaieria Arvedi in Cremona.
It is covered by numerous patents relative to both the whole process and the single phases of which it composed. This technology translates into a production process that belongs to the new generation of compact plants for the manufacture of steel coils which appeared on the world scene between the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s based on the so-called “thin slab” casting.
Continuous plant and technological development of ISP since 1992 has led to excellent results and has laid the foundations for future, even more advanced developments. The Arvedi ISP plant, which has produced 22 million tonnes of steel, is still the most advanced in terms of compactness, flexibility and quality product and is the only one to show important possibilities of further development.
The experience and research conducted over years of intense work on the ISP plant in Cremona have allowed a further step forward to be taken, realised in the ESP (Endless Strip Production) process technology which connects casting and rolling in a fully continuous process.
This technological development has led to the filing of new patents regarding thin slabs and plates and special coils and billets, leading to the re-definition of the technology as Arvedi Steel Technology - AST.