ThyssenKrupp Steel USA has opened its steel works in Calvert, Alabama, USA.
The main supplier of the plants and equipment is SMS Siemag, Germany.
The supply scope included a 5.3Mt/y hot-strip rolling mill, a combined pickling line and tandem cold rolling mill, a continuous pickling line, an acid regeneration plant, four hot-dip galvanizing lines with two furnaces and an offline skin-pass mill.
The plant’s main customers are the domestic appliances, construction and tube-manufacturing industries as well as the automotive industry, in particular the large carmakers in the south of the USA.
The rolling mill produces strip of steel grades, including multiphase steels and high-strength grades as well as around 1Mt/y of stainless steel.
SMS said the pickling line/tandem cold mill supplied is the most powerful of its kind, with a capacity of 2.5Mt/y.
In addition to the pickling line/tandem cold mill, 1.1Mt/y of hot strip can be treated in the continuous pickling line.
For carbon steels the plant is to be supplied with 3Mt/y of slab from Brazil where TKS is opening a manufacturing site to supply its US and European operation.
Construction of a stainless steelmaking plant has started at Calvert but currently stainless slab from TKS Europe and later Mexico is being processed.
For the further processing stages, SMS Siemag supplied four hot-dip galvanizing lines. The lines are designed to be flexible, with their annealing furnaces, coating equipment and temper mills.
Corrosion-protected strip products with tailor-made properties are manufactured on the lines.
