BUSINESS NEWS

Bodycote Increases HIP Capacity in the United States

Bodycote is expanding its hot isostatic pressing (HIP) capability in Greenville, S.C. The new HIP capacity, which will be online by the end of 2022, will focus on developments in additive manufacturing (AM) and advanced materials. The two additional vessels further extend the company’s range of installed capacity around the world. Bodycote’s Nadcap-accredited Greenville site, which holds several OEM approvals, consists of numerous vacuum furnaces and other capabilities suited to support AM customers. The Greenville site serves aerospace, defense, medical and general industrial customers throughout the southeastern region.

Bodycote has more than 50 HIP vessels of varying sizes in multiple locations. Processing capabilities can accommodate components that are nominally up to 6.5 feet in diameter x 12 feet high and weighing over 65,000 pounds.

Image courtesy of Bodycote

Thermal Product Solutions Acquires Redline Chambers

Thermal Product Solutions LLC (TPS), a provider of thermal-processing products and test solutions, acquired Redline Chambers. Salt Lake City, Utah-based Redline Chambers manufactures vacuum chambers and systems for the aerospace, defense, energy, electronics and medical industries. The company specializes in providing vacuum technology and leak-testing solutions.

TPS has brands including Baker Furnace, Blue M, Gruenberg, Tenney, Lindberg, MPH, Wisconsin Oven and now Redline Chambers. The Redline Chambers acquisition supports the continued growth of TPS within the vacuum chamber market.

“Redline’s ability to engineer and manufacture vacuum chambers and systems will bolster TPS’s ability to serve customers in this expanding market,” said Greg Jennings, president and CEO of TPS.

Steel Dynamics to Build, Operate Aluminum Flat-Rolled Mill

Steel Dynamics Inc. announced that its Board of Directors authorized the company to construct and operate a 650,000-metric-ton low-carbon, recycled aluminum flat-rolled mill, with two supporting satellite recycled-aluminum slab centers. The capital investment is estimated to be $2.2 billion for the three facilities, and commercial production is planned to begin in the first quarter 2025. The facility will utilize a significant amount of aluminum scrap in its production process supported by the company’s metals recycling platform, which Steel Dynamics says is the largest nonferrous metals recycler in North America.

The planned $1.9 billion aluminum flat-rolled mill will be located in the southeastern United States. The product offering will be supported by various value-added finishing lines, including CASH (continuous annealing solutions heat-treating) lines. Steel Dynamics will own over 94% of the rolling mill through a joint-venture arrangement with Unity Aluminum Inc., whose employees provide significant aluminum industry operating expertise to the project.

At full capacity, the aluminum rolling mill will require approximately 900,000 metric tons of annual aluminum slab supply. The rolling mill is expected to have the capacity to supply approximately 50% of its recycled-aluminum slab requirements on-site, with the remaining amount to be provided by the construction and operation of two additional satellite recycled aluminum slab centers: one to be located in the southwestern United States and the other in north-central Mexico. The Mexico facility is expected to begin operations in 2024 and the U.S. facility by the end of 2025.

AHT Adds Induction Hardening in Alabama

Advanced Heat Treat Corp. (AHT) announced the addition of UltraGlow induction hardening at its location in Cullman, Ala. The custom-built induction equipment has been delivered, and the company is ready for induction work. AHT’s Alabama employees trained at the company’s Waterloo, Iowa, location to prepare for the new service offering. Waterloo operates six induction-hardening units and hundreds of coils to accommodate various geometries.

Mikel Woods, AHT president, said, “We are pleased to offer induction hardening at a second AHT location. After talking with many of our customers, we know this will be a welcomed service, and we will provide better turnaround times than the area is currently experiencing.”

In the past couple years, AHT has invested in five new induction units and has plans for additional units as the customer base grows in Alabama. AHT’s Alabama location also offers ion nitriding, gas nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing and stress relieving.

GKN Powder Metallurgy Enters Permanent Magnets for EV Market

GKN Powder Metallurgy (GKN PM) announced its commitment to enter the permanent magnets for electric vehicle (EV) market in response to the supply challenges the industry is facing. The company says it is well positioned to meet the ever-increasing demand for a stable, local supply of permanent magnets, which are a vital component of EV motors. Using its industry expertise, existing production processes and manufacturing capabilities in North America and Europe, GKN PM will bring stability in the manufacturing of permanent magnets. Significant progress in product development has already been made, and the business is now entering the phase of industrialization planning. A dedicated Magnets project team operates out of the company’s Innovation Centres for metal powders in Cinnaminson, N.J., and for sinter-metal manufacturing in Radevormwald, Germany.

Diego Laurent, GKN PM CEO, said, “As a trusted provider of metal powders and components for the industry, we already have a scalable production footprint. We will leverage our well-established processes and capabilities to align these with the requirements of permanent magnet production. We aim to have in place the capacity for up to 4,000 metric tons of permanent magnets by 2024.”

GKN PM's Innovation Centre in Radevormwald, Germany (courtesy of GKN PM)

Nucor to Add Melt Shop at Arizona Bar Mill

Nucor Corp. will add a new melt shop at its bar mill in Kingman, Ariz. The $100 million facility will have the capacity to produce 600,000 tons annually and create approximately 140 new full-time jobs. Construction is expected to take two years pending permit and regulatory approvals. Nucor announced its intention to build a new melt shop at one of its existing bar mills in the western United States in September 2021. Nucor Steel Kingman is the ideal location for this project because it is a rolling mill that converts steel billets into coiled wire rod and rebar but lacks a melt shop.

“This investment in a new melt shop at our Arizona bar mill is part of our strategy to grow our core steelmaking business and will help us maintain our market leadership position in steel-bar production,” said Leon Topalian, president and CEO of Nucor. “Adding new melt-shop capacity will help meet the growing demand for steel-bar products in the western region.”

Wire rod and rebar are used primarily in concrete reinforcement for the construction of roads, buildings, bridges and other structures. Nucor produces steel by recycling scrap metal into new steel products. Last year the company’s steel-bar products averaged 98.5% recycled content.

Alcoa Increases North American Casting Capability

Alcoa Corp. announced that construction will soon begin on a project to increase the casting capabilities at its Deschambault smelter in Canada to include standard ingots. The new casting equipment will be constructed in an existing building, with the project scheduled to be fully complete in the first quarter of 2023. The output from the approximately $8 million return-seeking capital investment will complement the site’s two existing vertical casting pits, which exclusively cast T-bar ingots.

Adding standard ingot casting to the site’s capabilities will allow greater flexibility for alloying in smaller batches to meet customer needs for value-add products such as foundry alloys for the automotive industry. Each standard ingot weighs approximately 23 pounds (10.5 kg).

The Deschambault smelter, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2022, completed the installation of additional electrical infrastructure earlier this year that will allow it to continue to increase its production. The smelter has a nameplate capacity of 287,000 metric tons of aluminum per year.

Hydro Expanding Recycled Aluminum Production in Kentucky

Hydro is investing $15 million in its Henderson, Ky., facility to deliver certified recycled aluminum products to the automotive industry and further reduce the environmental impact from production. This investment will enhance Hydro’s position as a leading producer of low-carbon recycled aluminum in North America. The investment will support two key projects. Hydro will install a new homogenization furnace to improve the plant’s capabilities to meet the specifications of the growing U.S. automotive market, enabling Hydro Henderson to produce a greater volume of advanced alloys using recycled metals with a lower carbon footprint.  

Hydro will also install a new baghouse – a dust and gas collector for reducing air emissions – that will allow the plant to use greater volumes of post-consumer scrap and explore new, more difficult types of scrap, like material with paint or other contamination, which requires advanced equipment to recycle. The new baghouse will also improve the air quality inside the plant and reduce the overall environmental footprint from operations.

Image courtesy of Hydro

ArcelorMittal Acquires Brazilian Steelmaker for $2.2 Billion

ArcelorMittal signed an agreement with the shareholders of Companhia Siderúrgica do Pecém (CSP) to acquire CSP for approximately $2.2 billion. CSP produces high-quality slab at its state-of-the-art steel facility in the state of Ceará in northeast Brazil, which was commissioned in 2016. It operates a blast furnace with an annual capacity of 3 million metric tons. The transaction is expected to close by late 2022.

• The acquisition brings several strategic benefits to ArcelorMittal, including the potential to:
• Expand the company’s position in the high-growth Brazilian steel industry.
• Capitalize on the significant planned third-party investment to form a clean electricity and green hydrogen hub in Pecém.
• Add 3 million metric tons of high-quality and cost-competitive slab capacity, with the potential to supply slab intra-group or to sell into North and South America.
• Allow for further expansions by the company, such as the option to add primary steelmaking capacity (including direct reduced iron) and rolling and finishing capacity.

The state of Ceará has ambitions to develop a low-cost green hydrogen hub. The Pecém Green Hydrogen Hub, a partnership between the Pecém Complex and Linde is a large-scale green hydrogen project at the Port of Pecém, which is targeting to produce up to 5 GW of renewable energy and 900 kt/year of green hydrogen in a series of phases.

Eric Roth, Founder’s Scholarship recipient and material sciences engineering major at the University of Arizona said, “I am so grateful for this fantastic scholarship, and I appreciate all that MTI does to help launch young engineers into the thermal-processing industry. With the assistance of the scholarship award, I plan to finish my degree in the next nine months and do my very best to build a career that commits to the growth of the heat-treating industry.”

The MTI Educational Foundation is committed to engaging the next generation with resources to attract new talent into the heat-treating industry over the next decade. The MTI Educational Foundation awarded a total of $51,000 in scholarships to nine deserving students this year.

The MTI Educational Foundation Board of Directors reviews each of the applications and determines the recipients. The Board of Directors includes: Buster Crossley of Texas Heat Treating, Doug Glenn of Heat Treat Today, John Vanas of Euclid Heat Treating, Jamie Jones of Solar Atmospheres, Jim Oakes of Super Systems and Don Hendry of Pinson Valley Heat Treating.

The application process for 2023 scholarships will open in early 2023.

MTI Educational Foundation Awards Scholarship

The MTI Educational Foundation awarded Eric Roth of Tucson, Ariz., (University of Arizona) the $15,000 Founders Scholarship.  

“With the long-term labor shortage that everyone is facing, the Foundation is proud to be able to award nine more students financial resources that can help them further their education and attract them to our industry,” said Buster Crossley, Educational Foundation Chair. “It is exciting to see the emails of appreciation from them knowing that MTI is making a difference in their lives and hopefully attracting them to work in the industry after graduation.”

Eric Roth (University of Arizona), recipient of the MTI Educational Foundation's Founders Scholarship

Aluminum Manufacturing Facility to Create 122 Jobs in Kentucky

Lotte Aluminium Materials USA LLC will invest $238.7 million to build an aluminum foil manufacturing operation in Elizabethtown, Ky. The facility, which will create 122 full-time jobs, is expected to begin operation in 2025. The joint venture between Lotte Chemical and Lotte Aluminium will annually produce 36,000 tons of cathode foil, a type of ultra-thin aluminum foil that is a core material used in electric-vehicle (EV) batteries. Cathode foil is one of the four major components of lithium-ion batteries. It supports the cathode active material that determines the capacity and voltage of the secondary battery and, at the same time, serves as a passage for electrons.

Lotte Aluminium and Lotte Chemical are subsidiaries of Lotte Group, one of the largest conglomerates in South Korea, with over 90 business units employing more than 80,000 people. The facility, located on 40 acres in the T.J. Patterson Industrial Park, will be the company’s first aluminum foil facility in the United States. Company leaders anticipate demand for cathode foil to increase by an average of 32% annually by 2030.

Since June 2020, Kentucky has seen over $8.5 billion in EV-related investments, with over 8,000 full-time jobs announced.

Tenaris to Acquire Pipe Manufacturing Plant in Louisiana

Tenaris S.A. entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Benteler Steel & Tube Manufacturing Corp. for $460 million. Benteler Steel & Tube is a U.S. producer of seamless steel pipe, with an annual pipe rolling capacity of up to 400,000 metric tons at its production facility in Shreveport, La. The acquisition would further expand Tenaris’ production range and manufacturing presence in the U.S. market. Closing is expected to occur during the fourth quarter of 2022.