Industry brief

Metals & Metallurgy

Precise, safe control for hot, heavy, energy-hungry processes.

What matters

What matters most

Metals plants run hot, heavy and energy-hungry processes, from melting and refining to casting and rolling. Temperature, current and chemistry must be held tightly, while people work near molten metal, high-power supplies and heavy machinery. Customers expect traceable material, and high energy costs expose every inefficiency.

Process control and quality

Temperature, current and composition have to stay within tight limits, batch after batch. Stable control, recipe management and good data help cut scrap and rework and protect your customer approvals.

Safety around heavy plant

Molten metal, furnaces, cranes and high-power electrical plant carry serious hazards. Interlocks, safe stops and burner protection must be designed and proven to the level the risk demands.

Energy use and cost

Furnaces, electrolysis and large drives use vast amounts of energy. Metering, monitoring and reporting show where it goes, so you can control it and support your energy management system.

Traceable material

Customers want to know how every cast, coil or part was made. Linking process data to batches and products gives you the evidence behind inspection documents and quality investigations.

Solutions

Solutions for Metals

Matrix delivered the software, electrical and SCADA system for an aluminium smelter: the electrolytic cells and their anodes and cathodes, a high-power substation and transformers, control of cell current and anode and cathode replacement, with SCADA recipe handling, maintenance reporting, MES part tracking and reporting.

01Melting and holding furnaces

02Electrolysis, electrowinning and refining

03High-power substations and transformers

04Casting, rolling and finishing lines

05Recipe handling and MES part tracking

06Energy monitoring and production reporting

How we help

What we bring to Metals

Many metals processes run continuously, and an unplanned stop on a furnace or pot line can be very costly. We plan changes around your production and shutdowns, and prove new logic against a simulation of the process before it reaches site. You get the design, code and documentation to run and maintain the system yourselves.

Upgrades

Standards

The standards that shape your project

The standards listed are those most often relevant to control-system work in this sector. Which apply to your project, and how, is agreed with you at specification stage.

Standard	What it covers	How we work with it
BS EN 746-1, BS EN ISO 13577-2 and -4	Safety of industrial furnaces: general requirements, combustion and fuel handling, and protective systems.	Burner management, purging and furnace protective systems designed to their requirements.
BS EN 60204-1	Safety of machinery: electrical equipment of machines, including stopping and emergency stop.	Control panels and machine electrics designed to it and verified before and after installation.
BS EN ISO 13849-1	Design of the safety-related parts of machine control systems, rated by performance level (PL).	Safety functions designed and verified to the performance level your risk assessment requires.
ISO 50001	Requirements for an energy management system that measures and improves energy performance.	Energy metering, monitoring and reporting that give your energy management system reliable data.
BS EN 10204	Types of inspection document for metallic products, such as 3.1 and 3.2 certificates.	Process and test data captured against each batch, so your certificates are traceable.
IEC 62443	Cyber security for industrial automation and control systems, for owners, integrators and suppliers.	Its zones, conduits and security levels shape how we design networks and remote access.