Reksoft identifies new market niche worth 1 bln rubles in Russia, plans to occupy it
MOSCOW. July 7 (Interfax) - The Reksoft IT group identified a new market niche worth around 1 billion rubles in Russia and tens of billions of rubles worldwide while working on a project with Nornickel , and hopes to occupy it, director of Technological Transformation at Reksoft Consulting [Reksoft's consulting business] Alexei Bogomolov said.
This refers to a digital system for monitoring the Bessemer process [the process of oxidizing molten metal] for copper matte through UV spectroscopy, developed by Reksoft as part of a pilot project at the copper plant of Nornickel's Polar Division.
"This could be a fitting solution for Russia, at plants which specialize in non-ferrous metals and other production facilities where it is important to be able to measure chemical composition in real time - the country has at least 17 of these," Bogomolov said. "This market is worth around 1 billion rubles."
Bogomolov also said that China had around 40 copper plants and around 20 other factories where such technology could be used.
"The overall size of this market for various types of enterprises across the world could be tens of billions of rubles," he said.
Ilya Mukha, manager of Technological Transformation at Reksoft Consulting and senior research officer of the project, said that the system could analyze a range of gases which are emitted during smelting and determine which stage of the process has been reached in real time, as well as the optimal completion time for each stage. The Bessemer process is currently done "by hand" in most cases, with the operator making decisions based on a visual assessment of the color of the flame and metal sample.
The project involved fitting one of the company's converters with an industrial spectrometer and special UV lamps [developed for this project] to illuminate the gases emitted, as well as developing and training an algorithmic model. The system can thereby automatically suggest optimal completion times for each stage to the operator in order to minimalize losses of valuable ingredients.
Mukha said that the project cost several tens of millions of rubles, including the equipment and the development of the algorithmic model. The latter was developed for Nornickel's raw material stock, and it holds the rights to it.
The company plans to scale up the project in future, integrating the solution at six more of the company's converters in 2025-2026.
Anton Kharin, chief manager of Nornickel's innovations department, said that being able to determine the residual volume of iron and sulphur in the molten metal and predict an optimal completion time for the operation online would enable copper and blister copper recovery to be increased by 0.42%.
"According to preliminary estimates, implementing this technology on an industrial level will allow the company to make an additional 150-200 million rubles each year," Kharin said. "Scaling the technology up to use on all of the company's sites could allow the company to make $20 million each year."
Reksoft has plans to offer its product to other enterprises in the copper smelting and non-ferrous metallurgy sector. It said that the solution could be of interest to the ferrous metals industry, too, with the necessary modifications. Reksoft intends to offer the finished product to both Russian and overseas clients, primarily in Latin America, which has many copper plants, as well as Africa and China.
"The model can be individualized for different types of production and raw materials, and we are prepared to reapply our know-how and methods for creating and training algorithms for each specific client," Mukha said.
