AK Steel’s Board of Directors has approved a $21 million capital investment to expand the company’s production capabilities for high value-added, grain-oriented electrical steels. AK Steel will install new production equipment at the Butler (Pa.) Works to utilize its proprietary special annealing technology and will also upgrade an existing processing line at Butler. In addition to enhancing production capacity for higher-quality grades of electrical steels, the project should help improve the company’s product-mix flexibility.

AK Steel – one of the world’s largest producers of silicon-alloy electrical steels – said the newly announced investment would complement previously announced projects currently under way at the company’s Butler and Zanesville, Ohio, plants. The Butler Works project is expected to be completed in late 2009.