Metals Chips

Staff -- Purchasing, 10/7/2004

• Gerdau Ameristeel of Tampa is spending $266 million to acquire North Star Steel from Cargill. North Star facilities include bar, beam and rod mini-mills in St. Paul, Minn.; Wilton, Iowa; Calvert City, Ky.; and Beaumont, Texas. Gerdau Ameristeel then will become the second-largest mini-mill steel producer in North America with annual steelmaking capacity of 8.4 million tons at 14 mini-mills. The purchase also will create a steel-processing giant with 35 downstream operations.
• Outokumpu American Brass, one of North America's largest brass mills, is going to get a new owner. The Buffalo firm is the nation's second-largest producer of copper and brass sheet and strip products. But, parent company Outokumpu of Finland has put a for-sale sign on its the copper business ($1.9 billion in 2003 sales). Outokumpu is the second-largest copper fabricator in the world after SMI of Italy, but the firm wants to concentrate on its stainless steel operations. It's ranked third in stainless output after Arcelor and ThyssenKrupp.
• Quanex directors have approved a $20 million expansion for the MacSteel bar plant in Fort Smith, Ark., that will increase annual capacity by 40,000 tons to 500,000 tons/year. In addition to the capacity increase, the modernization will improve production flow and upgrade the rotary continuous caster, direct rolling mill and metallurgical refining areas. With this expansion, MacSteel's total shipping capacity in Arkansas and Michigan will be increased to more than 1.3 million tons.
• COMPANY BRIEFS: Harris Steel Group of Toronto has purchased the Lafarge Canada reinforcing steel bar business for $1.6 million. Wire rod has begun flowing from the former Georgetown Steel plant in South Carolina that now is owned by International Steel Group of suburban Cleveland. Greer Steel of Dover, Ohio, has begun production of a new 22-inch finishing mill, which will increase capacity of tempered strip steel by 3,000 tons/month. Steel bar distributor Sunbelt-Turret Steel has completed a move into new Charlotte, N.C., facilities that will quintuple its warehouse space to 110,000 square feet. The firm is a division of Leetsdale, Pa.-based Turret Steel Industries. Stelco of Hamilton, Ontario, plans to sell two steelmaking subsidiaries, Stelwire and Stelpipe, as part of its four-point turnaround strategy when it works to emerge from bankruptcy court-supervised restructuring. Ryerson Tull Inc., the Chicago service center conglomerate, plans to close its plant in Philadelphia by the end of the year and consolidate regional processing and distribution at another facility. Inventory and processing equipment from the Philadelphia plant will be relocated to Fairless Hills, Pa.