Tata Steel plans to build a new steel tube manufacturing and processing facility at its Zwijndrecht plant in the Netherlands to serve the automotive sector. It is expected to be in operation by July 2012. The main elements of this expansion will be a heat-treatment facility for the production of normalized precision tubes and a cut-to-length line. The investment will create 19 jobs. Steel used at the facility, including advanced and ultrahigh-strength steels, will come from Tata Steel’s plants in IJmuiden and Port Talbot.          

According to Tata Steel, one of the main targets of the facility will be the supply of specialized chassis parts: normalized, cut-to-length, high-strength steel tubes for lightweight structural use in vehicles. The Zwijndrecht investment will make Tata Steel a fully integrated tubes supplier for the automotive sector, controlling the complete chain from the production of steel to the production, normalizing, cutting and packing of tubes.