On Thursday morning, Sophia Fain (our newest employee) and John Packard visited ThyssenKrupp Steel USA in Calvert, Alabama just north of Mobile. As you can see by the photo below the mill has been actively producing hot band since their very first coil was run at the end of July of this year.

The mill has been making commercial shipments and SMU was informed by one of our TKS USA sources the company expects to ship less than 500,000 tons through the balance of the year. The largest portion being hot rolled, which they are producing now, with a much smaller percentage as full hard cold rolled. ThyssenKrupp Steel USA is in the early stages of commissioning their PTLCM (Pickle and Tandem Cold Mill) and we were able to view one of the early coils off the cold mill although the line was not running at the time of our visit.

The commissioning of the hot mill continues utilizing one reheat furnace. The second reheat furnace is approximately 30-45 days away from being ready for commissioning. The first reheat furnace is pumping out a heated slab approximately every 8-10 minutes.

The mill is running mild carbon product first in a thickness range of approximately .100” to ½” in thickness. We heard from multiple sources from the very first coil the mill has been able to produce dead nuts on in thickness and shape. The coils we saw being produced appeared to be of high quality and you can get a feel for the quality of the material in the hot band coil staging photo above.

The photo to the right is of a heated strip having come out of the reheat furnace and through the reversing mill.

ThyssenKrupp Steel USA slab inventory appeared to be over-flowing as they slab yard was full and the mill had slabs being stored on the other side of the street from the hot mill.

We understand their first shipment of Brazilian slabs coming from their sister plant is in the process of being loaded onto a vessel. Prior to the Brazilian slabs the mill has been using slabs from their sister plants in Europe.

According to information shared with SMU by one of the industry steel analysts – TKS USA is projecting shipments of 2.0-2.5 million metric tons during calendar year 2011 (2.2-2.75 million short tons).

Their first coating line is scheduled to begin the commissioning process by late December 2010.

Mr. Robert Holt, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for ThyssenKrupp Steel USA will be one of our featured speakers at our first steel conference in Las Vegas on October 19th. At that time we will learn more about the commissioning process and schedule for the remaining equipment which includes 3 coating lines plus a continuous anneal cold rolled mill.

For more information about our steel conference which will be held in conjunction with Metalcon go to: www.steelmarketupdate.com/events.