Ipsco is expanding heat-treating capacity for OCTG (oil country tubular goods) at Calgary, Alberta, before year-end and will increase its casing product range through mill modifications at Calgary and Regina, Saskatchewan. Full production is expected in the first quarter of 2006.

Crucible Specialty Metals is adding a new high-temperature furnace that will increase capacity for annealing and heat treating by 35%. Anticipated to be on stream during the first quarter next year, the furnace will primarily process 300 series stainless and precipitation-hardening grades.

Crucible Service Centers is planning a late-2005 opening of a greenfield 25,000 sq ft warehouse in Chatham, Ontario. The stocking location will replace a facility that the Syracuse, N.Y.-based service center chain closed more than a year ago because of unsafe building conditions.

Severstal North America will spend $500 million to boost hot- metal output and finished steel capability at its Dearborn, Mich. plant. The plan is to produce 72-in.-wide coils of automotive-grade sheet, says Bill Hornberger, executive vice president. The plan is to boost one blast furnace's capacity to about 6,360 tons/day from its current 4,650 tons—and maybe close a less-efficient 2,350-ton/day furnace.

Grupo Techint of Argentina is purchasing Grupo Alfa's 42.5% stake in the Hylsa steelmaker in Mexico. Techint, which already owns steelmakers Sidor in Venezuela and Siderar in Argentina, now plans to consolidate all these Latin American steel assets within a single regional steel producer of flat and bar products. The new company, called Ternium, will have annual steelmaking capacity of 12 million metric tons and annual revenues of approximately $5 billion.

Nippon Steel will spend $228.5 million to start a new continuous casting facility at its Kimitsu steelmaking plant in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo. The new machine will start operations in November 2006 and will have the monthly capacity to roll out 160,000 metric tons of semifinished steel products destined for rolling into high-quality steel products for use in automobiles and shipbuilding.

Metal One is the new parent of Rafferty-Brown Steel, which operates flat-rolled steel processing and distribution plants in Waterbury, Conn., and Greensboro, N.C. Metal One is a Japanese steel trader whose New York-based North American company has become the parent of the various Coilplus plants, Alloy Tool Steel, Berwick Steel, Nifast, McTubular Products, Monzen Steel and Nicometal in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Commercial Metals has purchased the steel joist manufacturing operation in Juarez, Mexico, from Canadian fabricator Canam Group. Commercial Metals will use the plant to service the southwestern U.S. and Mexico. It currently has facilities in the southeastern and Midwestern U.S. markets.

Astro Air of Jacksonville, Texas, has begun fabricating brazed copper-brass heat exchangers to replace aluminum heat exchangers in some motor vehicles made by General Motors and Ford. International Copper Association says CuproBraze materials are being used to make heat-exchanger cores for Hummer, Ford GT, Lotus and Rover models.