The Cedynia smelter, celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, has just produced 8-million tonnes of Cu-ETP wire rod. This is one of the copper giant’s main sales products. The Orsk smelter is developing production and environmental projects – electromobility or obtaining energy from renewable sources.

The Cedynia smelter, a division of KGHM, is the largest processing plant for this metal in Poland and one of the four largest copper smelters in Europe. Initially, the Cedynia smelter produced wire rod with a diameter of 6.35 mm, and now with a diameter of 8 mm.

KGHM’s Orsk facility is a modern rolling mill which processes electrolytically refined cathode copper produced at the Głogów and Legnica smelters into copper wire rod and oxygen-free copper wire of the highest quality. These are also the most highly-processed copper products offered by KGHM.

The Cedynia smelter is referred to as a “green smelter” due to its low environmental impact and its extremely picturesque location – it is surrounded on all sides by meadows, fields and forests. Near the smelter there is the nature reserve “Skarpa Storczyków” and the Natura 2000 site “Łęgi Odrzańskie”.

The smelter began production in 1979 with the commissioning, based on Belgian Contirod technology, of a modern continuous copper melting, casting and rolling line with a production capacity of around 100,000 tonnes per year.  Between 1994 and 2004, with the increasing demand of European markets for high-quality copper wire rod, production at Orsk more than doubled and in 2007 exceeded 250 thousand tonnes. New products were also introduced to the sales range. In 2006, a new installation for the production of oxygen-free copper wire, based on Upcast technology, was commissioned, which increased the production capacity of the smelter by 15 thousand tonnes of copper per year.

Adrian Andrzejewski