Billets and blooms are the semi-finished steel from which long products are rolled: a billet is a small square section, typically 100–200 mm, and a bloom a larger square or rectangular one. Almost every bar, rebar, wire rod, section and seamless tube starts as one, and billet is one of the most widely traded steel products in the Middle East.
Also called
Billets
Blooms
Steel billet
Square billet
Continuous cast billet
CC billet
Semis
Semi-finished steel
3SP / 5SP
Beam blank
AR
بيليت (كتل الصلب) وبلوم
ZH
钢坯（方坯和大方坯）
DE
Knüppel und Vorblöcke
FR
Billettes et blooms
ES
Palanquillas y tochos
IT
Billette e blumi
TR
Kütük ve blum
RU
Заготовка и блюмы
Main formsSquare billets, square and rectangular blooms, round blooms for tube rounds, beam blanks
Typical sizesBillets 100–200 mm square (130 and 150 mm most common); blooms 200–400 mm and larger; lengths 6–12 m
Main standardsGOST 380 / 1050, GB/T 700, SAE J403, EN 10025-2, mill and contract specifications
Typical usesFeed for rebar, wire rod, merchant bar, section and seamless tube mills
Overview
A billet is a length of steel with a square cross-section, usually 100 to 200 mm a side; a bloom is the same thing on a larger scale, typically from about 200 mm square up to rectangular sections of 300 × 400 mm or more. Both are intermediate products: they are not used as they are, but reheated and rolled into finished long products. Billets feed rebar, wire rod and merchant-bar mills; blooms feed mills rolling heavy sections, rails, large bars and the round billets pierced for seamless tube.
Today almost all billets and blooms are continuously cast. Liquid steel from an electric arc furnace or a basic oxygen converter, refined in a ladle furnace, flows into a water-cooled copper mould and is drawn out as a continuous strand, cooled with water sprays and cut to length with a torch or shear. A billet caster typically has four to eight strands. Some mills charge the billets hot, straight from the caster to the rolling mill's furnace, which saves energy; others cool, inspect and store them. Rolling blooms down to billets in a breakdown mill, once the normal route, is now kept mainly for high-quality bar where the extra reduction improves the internal soundness.
Billet is bought on chemistry rather than mechanical properties, because the finished product's properties are made in the rolling mill. A rebar mill buys billets with the carbon, manganese and micro-alloying that its process needs to reach B500B or Grade 60; a wire rod mill buys low-carbon, low-residual billets (SAE 1006 to 1018 type) so that the rod can be drawn. In the CIS and Middle East trade the grades are commonly named after GOST 380 — 3SP (killed, about 0.14–0.22% carbon) and 5SP (about 0.28–0.37% carbon) — and in Chinese trade after GB/T 700 (Q235, Q275) or 20MnSi.
The Gulf is both a large producer and a large importer of billet. Integrated DRI and electric arc furnace plants — among them Hadeed (SABIC) in Saudi Arabia, Emirates Steel Arkan in the UAE, Qatar Steel and Jindal Shadeed in Oman — cast billets for their own rebar and wire rod mills, while re-rollers across the region buy billet on the open market, much of it from Iran, Russia and the CIS, Oman and Asia. Billet prices therefore set the floor for rebar prices in the region. MESteel publishes a weekly EXW UAE billet price and the monthly Middle East billet import price.
Forms & sizes
Billets are ordered by section size, length, grade and chemistry. The size is set by the caster mould, so a buyer chooses among the sizes a mill casts rather than asking for any dimension; a re-roller chooses the size its reheating furnace and first stands are built for.
Square billets
100, 120, 125, 130, 150, 160 and 200 mm; 130 and 150 mm are the usual sizes for rebar and wire rod mills
Blooms
Square from about 200 mm and rectangular sections such as 250 × 300 or 300 × 400 mm, varying with the caster
Round blooms
Round sections cast or rolled for seamless tube mills and forging
Beam blanks
Dog-bone-shaped near-net-shape sections cast for rolling H-beams
Lengths
6 m and 12 m are standard; other lengths to suit the buyer's furnace, with a cut-length tolerance agreed in the contract
Surface condition
As cast, with torch-cut ends or deburred; ground or scarfed for special-quality bar
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