ThyssenKrupp Stainless USA will build a new stainless slab meltshop for its new processing plant in Alabama. The complete meltshop will comprise a 160-ton electric-arc furnace, 180-ton AOD (argon oxygen decarburization) converter and 72-inch continuous caster with an annual capacity of 900,000 to 1 million tons. Start-up of the meltshop is scheduled for December 2012. Until then, ThyssenKrupp Stainless USA is being supplied with slabs from the group’s European mills.

Stainless steel slabs produced by the new meltshop will be rolled into hot band on the hot-strip mill of sister company ThyssenKrupp Steel USA. Around 340,000 tons per year of this hot band will go to ThyssenKrupp Mexinox in San Luis Potosí (Mexico), with another roughly 525,000 tons per year to be transformed in the cold rolling mill into 175,000 tons of white hot-rolled (up to 10 millimeter thickness) and 350,000 tons of stainless cold-rolled (0.5-5 millimeter thickness).