Metals Chips: Mini-mill giant Nucor of Charlotte, N.C., has acquired Fort Howard Steel

Staff -- Purchasing, 3/3/2005

• Mini-mill giant Nucor of Charlotte, N.C., has acquired Fort Howard Steel, a producer of cold-finished steel bar products in Oak Creek, Wis., with 140,000 tons of annual capacity.
• Gerdau Ameristeel will spend $85 million to install a new melt shop at its Jacksonville, Fla., mini-mill to replace original equipment installed in the early 1970s with a new electric furnace, billet caster and reheat furnace. The work will increase the mill's capacity for reinforcing bars by 17% to 700,000 tons/year
• Piper Impact, a cold forged impact extrusion business in Jackson, Miss., has been sold by Quanex Corp. to Piper Metal Forming Corp., a privately held company.
• Ferrolux Metals Co. of Ohio is installing a single-loop precision class-one automotive slitting line at its flat-rolled steel processing plant in Cleveland. The line will process coils measuring up to 78-inch wide and up to 110,000 pounds at a maximum speed of 1,200 feet/minute. Strip thickness will range from 0.015 inch to 0.135 inch.
• Chaparral Steel has begun a project to expand and upgrade the walking-beam reheat furnace to double the heating capacity of its large structural section mill in Midlothian, Texas. The upgrade includes removal of the existing combustion system and installation of new low-nitrogen burners along with a completely new waste gas system.
• Roanoke Electric Steel Corp. has sold reinforcing bar subsidiary, Resco Steel Products in Salem, Va., to rebar-fabrication specialist Rockingham Steel of Harrisonburg, Va. Executives say Resco is no longer a good strategic fit because Roanoke's Virginia bar mill no longer makes reinforcing bars.
• Sterling Steel has ordered a new endless welding rolling (EWR) line for its 12-inch rod mill in Sterling, Ill. The billet welding process allows production of customized-weight coils, granting higher product marketability. The new EWR line will allow automatic continuous welding of billets for low-, medium- and high-carbon spring steels.
• Hydro Magnesium plans to add 7,000 metric tons to the production capacity at its Becancour magnesium plant in Quebec. The upgrade program will increase production to 58,000 metric tons/year of cast primary metal. The plant expansion will be completed in the summer of 2006.
• Shareholders of Nova Scotia-headquartered Magnesium Alloy Corp. have approved a name change to MagIndustries Corp., which is being restructured into three business segments—MagMetals, magnesium smelting; MagMinerals, agricultural-grade potash fertilizers and food industry-grade salt, and MagEnergy electrical energy.
• Steel tube maker LJT-Tennessee is planning a $7.4-million expansion at its mechanical and structural grade steel tubing plant at the Centre South Riverport in Chattanooga.
• Steel Structural Systems, a new steel manufacturing company, plans to lease 40,000 sq ft at a south Louisville, Ky., industrial park where it will produce roll-formed steel framing components and light-gauge metal construction materials.