The ongoing struggle to reduce the production costs in steelmaking is one of the important driving forces for R&D engineers. By combining new technical solutions from different areas with new ideas for steelmaking, it is possible to find new cost effective processes for steel production. During the last decade, great efforts have been made worldwide to develop new techniques for near net shape casting of steel. Most of these projects have dealt with production of steel strip. This paper describes the work carried out at MEFOS to develop the DSC (Direct Strip Casting) process. The process is based on the horizontal single belt principle. Based upon the experience to date, we can conclude that belt casting is a technology suitable for high productivity demands, e.g., for mass production of low carbon steels. © Munksgaard, 1997.