By KEVIN NEVERS

Nearly four years after International Steel Group (ISG) acquired U.S. Steel Corporation’s 160-inch plate mill at the Gary Works, ISG’s successor, Mittal Steel USA, has announced plans to start up that long idled mill, in response to the booming energy industry’s demand for steel plate.

Paul Gipson, president of United Steelworkers Local 6787, told the Chesterton Tribune on Tuesday that the 160-inch mill–dubbed the West Plate Mill because, though it’s located on the east side of Gary, it’s west of Burns Harbor–should be up and running in September.

Gipson expects the startup to create 200 new jobs.

Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s successor, ISG, acquired the 160-inch plate mill in 2003 from USS in a more or less straight swap, USS’s mill for ISG’s No. 2 pickle line at Indiana Harbor Works in East Chicago. Although Mittal Steel USA has been using the heat-treating line which came with the plate mill, the mill itself has been idled for some time.

USS “refurbished” the facility in 1990 but Mittal Steel USA plans to spend around $35 million to get it operational, Gipson said. “It’s a good mill but it needs a little capital money invested in it.”

The 160-inch mill at Gary Works will join the 110-inch and the 160-inch at the Burns Harbor facility in producing plate to meet the demand of the red-hot energy industry for steel to make wind towers, fuel storage tanks, and railroad tanker cars, Gipson said. “The price of steel plate is really up there now.”

But the 160-inch mill at Gary is “not capable of producing armor plate,” Gipson added, and the decision to start it up has nothing to do with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Local 6787 members who work at the 110-inch and 160-inch mills at Burns Harbor will have first bidding rights for jobs at the 160-inch at Gary Works, Gipson said. If there proves little interest in those jobs among the Burns Harbor members, then the hiring will be done off the street.

Under a nepotism clause in the collective bargaining agreement, however, qualified relatives of Local 6787 members must be considered first for the jobs, Gipson said.

Mittal Steel USA’s decision to start up the 160-inch mill is not the only recent move by a domestic steelmakers to take advantage of the demand for steel products fueled by the surging energy industry. Earlier this spring USS announced that it was acquiring Lone Star Technologies Inc., a leading manufacturer of welded oilfield tubular goods, as well as participating in a joint venture with two Korean firms to construct a spiral welded tubular manufacturing facility to establish a presence in the large-diameter line pipe market.

Posted 5/23/2007