Wolverine Tube of Huntsville, Ala., will discontinue its U.S. plumbing tube business and close plants in Decatur, Ala., and Booneville, Miss., that makes copper plumbing tube and smooth industrial tube.

ArcelorMittal plans to idle tinplate lines at its Dofasco subsidiary in Hamilton, Ontario, and at its Liège Works in eastern Belgium early next year because of poor market conditions for the tin-coated sheet steel (used in cans and other packaging) in North America and Europe.

U.S. Steel has completed the $1.9 billion acquisition of Stelco and renamed the 4 million ton/year sheet maker U.S. Steel Canada. The new president and general manager is Douglas Matthews, who replaced former Stelco CEO Rodney Mott. Matthews previously served as vice president and general director of U.S. Steel Serbia, a 2.4 million ton/year integrated steel mill in Sabac and Smederevo, Serbia.

Structural steel distributor Azco Steel, a unit of Bushwick Metals in Englewood, N.J., plans to open a new service center in Blytheville, Ark., near the main Nucor-Yamato Steel structurals plant. David Maslin, director of sales and marketing, says the service center is expected to be operational by February 2008.

Alcoa of Pittsburgh has completed the sale of its automotive castings business to the Compass Automotive Group, a unit of New York-based private equity firm Monomoy Capital Partners. Other Monomoy firms provide aluminum and magnesium castings to automotive suppliers.

Steel Technologies of Louisville, Ky., has slated a $3.5 million expansion of its new $8.5 million facility in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The plant now has 120,000 ton/year capacity of processing 72-inch-wide steel coils, which will rise to 180,000 tons when the expansion is completed.

The new InterWire Group 80,000 square-foot metal and wire distribution center in Kentwood, Mich., now has a new general manager, Dan Sinclair. He has worked in sales for Carpenter Technology and Ulbrich Specialty Metals.

The Superior Court of Quebec has approved what is called a plan of arrangement for the Novamerican Steel acquisition by Symmetry Holdings of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. Based in Montreal, Novamerican Steel operates 22 facilities in Canada and the U.S. that process and distribute carbon and stainless steels and aluminum products.

Tico Titanium has moved its headquarters and main service center into a new facility in Wixom, Mich., three miles northeast of the previous facility in New Hudson. The new equipment includes in-house press straightening and flattening; lathes; vertical milling, drilling and tapping plus additional saws and increased waterjet plate-cutting.

Rio Tinto Alcan will spend $2.1 billion over the next decade to boost its primary aluminum production capacity in the Saguenay district of Quebec to 400,000 metric tons. At the centre of the expansion plan is the construction of a new pilot plant designed to optimize Rio Tinto Alcan's new AP50 aluminum smelting technology.

Hitachi Metals will boost U.S. production of cast aluminum car wheels by 20% to 270,000 units/year by 2010 at its AAP subsidiary in St. Mary's, Ohio. AAP procures aluminum ingots from outside sources, melts them in a furnace and then casts the metal in dies to forge wheels. It will install new casting machines and finishing equipment to raise production.

Indian steel pipe maker PSL Ltd. will invest $103 million to build an integrated pipe manufacturing and coating facility in Bay St. Louis, Miss., with annual capacity of 300,000 tons. The plan will be operating in the autumn of 2008, run by a newly established subsidiary, PSL North America.

Tex-Tube, a producer of steel line and standard pipe products, has completed a $5 million upgrade at its Houston mill that will result in higher-quality tubing products. Tex-Tube is owned by Villacero of Monterrey, Mexico, a steel producing and distributing company.

For $800 million, Vallourec of France, a producer of steel tubing, has bought three units within the Tubular Technologies and Services segment of Grant Prideco, a Houston-based maker of drill bits, drill pipe and other tools for the energy industry. In the deal are Atlas Bradford Premium Threading & Services, TCA and Tube-Alloy, which had combined revenues of $229 million during the last 12 months. Vallourec already owns Omsco of Houston, a manufacturer of drilling pipe, collars, jars, valves, joints, rotary subs and lift plugs.