SDI to expand Virginia operations

Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI), a steel company headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has announced that its Roanoke Bar Division, Roanoke, Virginia, will undergo an expansion and diversification project that will result in the facility’s rolling capacity expanding from 500,000 tons per year to more than 600,000 tons per year.

The project, with a cost of $28 million, will include integrating a new reheating furnace and a new finishing area. The German equipment company SMS Group received the contract.

"With the addition of this equipment, which allows for multi-strand slitting and rebar finishing, we expect the added product diversification and our existing highly competitive cost structure to allow us to quickly grow market share,” says Joe Crawford, vice president and Roanoke Bar Division general manager.

“Additionally, we will be one of the largest independent rebar suppliers without our own rebar fabricating business, which we believe will be a positive for our new customer base," Crawford continues.

The equipment to be installed is comprised of a pusher-type high-capacity reheating furnace designed to process 140 tons of billets per hour. The plan is to roll the billets into light sections and reinforcing bars from sizes No. 4 to No. 11, as well as into corresponding round bars, SDI says. The new reheating furnace will not only increase productivity but also will improve energy efficiency through the adoption of a smart combustion management system.

After the upgrade, SDI’s Roanoke Bar Division says it expects to increase production of rebar to more than 200,000 tons per year. Commissioning is expected to be by the end of this year.

“Steel Dynamics has built a strong reputation in the Roanoke region and in Virginia, which will be bolstered by these infrastructure enhancements and the retraining of 307 existing employees on new machinery,” says Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Todd Haymore. “Virginia is an ideal home for manufacturing companies looking to grow, as evidenced by more than $13 billion invested in this critical sector in the past decade alone. We thank Steel Dynamics for its corporate partnership and look forward to continued success.”

Since 1955, Steel Dynamics Roanoke Bar Division has been manufacturing steel, processing scrap and marketing merchant steel products and billets. The company’s Roanoke steel minimill melts ferrous scrap in an electric arc furnace and continuously casts the molten steel into billets, which are rolled into merchant steel products consisting of angles, plain rounds, flats and channels.

SDI’s Roanoke Bar Division markets its products to steel service centers, fabricators and original equipment manufacturers.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) will support SDI’s retraining through its Virginia Jobs Investment Program (VJIP), which provides consultative services and funding to companies creating new jobs or experiencing technological change to support employee training activities.