ThyssenKrupp Building Steel Mill in Alabama

ThyssenKrupp’s board has approved a project to build a steel mill in Alabama. The project is expected to cost around $4.2 billion, and is slated to begin operations by 2010 in Mount Vernon, Ala.

The plant will be jointly operated by the Steel and Stainless segments for the company.

"This project is a central element of the Group’s strategy for the Steel and Stainless segments, aimed at achieving profitable growth in Europe and North America. It will considerably strengthen ThyssenKrupp’s position in North America," said Ekkehard Schulz, ThyssenKrupp’s executive board chairman.

Low-cost slabs will be supplied from the company new steel mill in Brazil, which is expected to start production in 2009. The mill will have a capacity of 5 million tons of slabs per year. The Alabama steel mill will process those slabs.

The new plant will be a jointly used hot strip mill with a capacity of up to 5.2 million metric tons per year. It will process 3 million tons of slabs from ThyssenKrupp CSA’s steel mill in Brazil and produce 4.1 million metric tons of flat carbon steel end products per year. Cold rolling and hot-dip coating capacities will also be installed for premium carbon steel end products.

In addition, ThyssenKrupp Stainless will build an electric steel plant with a capacity of up to 1 million metric tons of slabs per year which will be rolled on the hot strip mill. A cold rolling facility is also to be erected which, in the first phase, will be designed to produce 350,000 tons of cold-rolled strip and 125,000 tons of pickled hot-rolled material. An additional 340,000 tons of stainless hot-rolled produced on the hot strip mill will be supplied to the ThyssenKrupp Mexinox cold rolling facility in San Luis Potosí (Mexico).

The new mill is a key element of ThyssenKrupp Stainless’ growth strategy, which is geared toward securing the company’s position in its European core market and exploiting options on other interesting markets.

In recent years, ThyssenKrupp Stainless has established an outstanding position in the NAFTA region. The Stainless group is already active on the North American stainless market through its Mexican cold rolling operation ThyssenKrupp Mexinox in San Luis Potosí and through imports from its plants in Germany, Italy and China. Distribution is handled by a highly-efficient Chicago-based operation. The new plant will enable ThyssenKrupp Stainless to sustain its high share of the fast-growing Mexican market and significantly strengthen its position in the USA and Canada.