Taiyo Nippon Sanso (President: Yujiro Ichihara) will supply on-site gas to JFE Steel (President: Atsushi Kakigi) newly from October 2017. Concretely speaking, the current air-separation gas production business being done by JFE Steel itself in the Kurashiki District(Okayama Pref.) of its Nishi Nippon Steel Works (Kawasaki-Dori, Mizushima, Kurashiki City) will be transferred to JFE Sanso Center (President: Shinji Tanabe) of JV gas producer and supplier with the investment of 60% by TNSC and 40% by JFE Steel.

For the on-site supply of gas to JFE Steel, it is the 3rd location to apply the Sanso Center system (JV) following Keihin (Kanagawa Pref.) and Fukuyama (Hiroshima Pref.). TNSC established Yawata Sanso Center for implementation of an on-site gas supply to Yawata Steel Work by a 50/50 investment with Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation on January 1, 2016. It describes the recent movement that steel makers are transforming their policy one after another from the gas consumption by their in-house procurement to an on-site supply system of JV style. Together with the transformation, the steelmaker is going to replace the ASU with 2 new units having the O2 gas capacity of 60 thousand Nm3/h in the largest scale domestically. TNSC is to provide production facilities for a scheduled start-up of operation at the end of 2018. The steelmaker has a total of 6 units of cryogenic air separation equipment, but the oldest one is so aged as more than 40 years. More efficient production of gas can be expected by the replacement with the new plant.

By the way, the planned capacity of the new plant (120 thousand Nm3/h of oxygen gas and 166 thousand Nm3/h of nitrogen gas) will be nearly equivalent to the existing 6 units. The investment for the gas supply equipment including the cryogenic ASU in Kurashiki is estimated to amount to about 20 billion yen.