Midrex Technologies Inc last month announced that the world total of direct reduced iron produced using the MIDREX® Direct Reduction Process has surpassed 500 million tonnes.

Mr James D McClaskey president & CEO of Midrex said that “This production milestone is a great example of how much we have progressed as a process technology and as a company since Portland, Oregon less than 40 years ago. In addition to this milestone, just recently we began engineering on our newest contracted project, Egyptian Sponge Iron & Steel Company, the first 2G HOTLINK Plant and the largest MIDREX module ever to be built in Egypt. The market is healthy and the future is bright.”

The first commercial Midrex Plant began operation in 1969 in Portland Oregon and the technology has steadily evolved and grown. Since Portland, Midrex has built more than 60 MIDREX® Modules in 19 countries worldwide and has become the leading process technology for producing DRI with more than 60% of the world’s DRI produced using MIDREX® Technology. Midrex has also been awarded numerous contracts for new plants over the past few years and commissioning of these plants has already begun and at the current rate of growth DRI produced by the MIDREX® Process would surpass 1 billion tonnes by 2015.