By KEVIN NEVERS

U.S. steelmakers may be under growing pressure from unfair competition abroad and a tilted playing field at home—as the American Iron and Steel Institute says in a report released this month—but Mittal Steel USA is making a $58 million bet on continued prosperity.

This year Mittal Steel will be investing a minimum of $58 million on major capital improvements at its facilities, spokesman Dave Allen told the Chesterton Tribune today, including an $11 million project at Burns Harbor and a $15 million project at Indiana Harbor.

At Burns Harbor the continuous heat-treating line will be upgraded to give it the same ability to make advanced high-strength steel now produced by the Indiana Harbor’s heat-treating line. “There’s a growing market for stronger, lighter steel used in a number of applications,” Allen said, “including the safety cages of automobiles.”

Heat-treating, otherwise called annealing, is a vital step in the process by which the very hard cold-rolled steel is softened to give it formability. “You try to bend a fender from cold-rolled steel,” Allen noted, “and it just snaps.”

In fact there are two heat-treating processes currently utilized at Burns Harbor: batch annealing, in which coils are stacked four or five high and a furnace is actually placed over them; and continuous annealing, in which coils welded together are run through the furnace and then, in a single operation, through a “precisely controlled cooling spring.”

Continuous annealing, however, gives the company much more flexibility than batch annealing does.

At Indiana Harbor, meanwhile, a rolling temper mill will be built onto the galvanizing mill to streamline the process. Right now the operations are separate: in the galvanizing mill steel is coated with zinc, then moved by forklift or other conveyance to the temper mill, where the final finish is applied to the surface. The combination of the galvanizing and temper mills will eliminate the need to move the steel from one to the other and make the process “way-more efficient,” Allen said.

An additional $30 million will also be invested at Mittal Steel’s facility in Cleveland, Ohio, and Lackawana, Pa. The projects have all been budgeted, Allen added, but not yet scheduled.

“We recognize that it takes constant and persistent attention to improvement to maintain our status as a global leaders,” said Bill Ball, director of engineer, in Mittal Steel’s‚ January newsletter. “That strategy includes regularly investing in projects to update our technology, improve our processes, increase safety, quality, and productivity, and decrease cost and waste.”

BH HQ

In other news, Allen said that Mittal Steel USA President Mike Rippey has moved his headquarters from Chicago to Burns Harbor. Mittal Steel USA is now a subsidiary of Arcelor Mittal Flat America, whose headquarters remains in Chicago.

Posted 1/12/2007