October 16, 2008

WISCO bags Bekaert Quality Award for wire rod supplies

Bekaert has granted the ‘Vincent Gaeremynck Award’ to its wire rod supplier Hubei Province based Wuhan Iron and Steel Group.

Mr Bert De Graeve CEO of Bekaert said that “Wire rod and its quality play a vital role in our production processes. This not only determines our product quality, it also has a major impact on productivity and process stability. In order to be able to supply our own customers with high quality products, we impose very strict quality standards on the wire rod suppliers worldwide. In China, Wuhan Iron and Steel Group is one of our most important strategic suppliers for wire rod. In the last 2 years they really stood out for their speed of product development, the intrinsic quality of their products, the continuous investment in their facilities and their in-time deliveries.”

This award is presented to the supplier who has shown the greatest improvement in the quality of its wire rod supply, Bekaert’s most important raw material every 2 years. Candidates for the award are evaluated against the following criteria
1. Quality of the wire rod in terms of internal and external characteristics, chemical composition and mechanical properties
2. Wire rod research and development program
3. Delivery conditions and general logistic support
4. Process ability of the product in Bekaert plants worldwide
5. Supplier’s responsiveness in terms of quality improvement and claim handling.

WISCO owns a complete set of steel processing plants, including mining, coking, sintering, iron making, steel making, rolling and the associated utilities. With an annual capacity of 20 million tonnes Wuhan Iron and Steel Group is one of the major players in its industry. Its products include wire rod, rails, plates and different types of sheets.