New Capacity Roundup - September 2022

Here is a selection of the major steelmakers' latest production and capacity investments announced this month. 

Europe 

Salzgitter AG has contracted plant builder Primetals to construct a new electric arc furnace at its facility in Lower Saxony, Germany. The unit will have a tap weight of 220 tonnes, which equates to an annual production capacity of up to 1.9 million tonnes. It is expected to enter service toward the end of 2025. The project forms part of the company’s green steel transformation programme, whereby it anticipates a 95 percent reduction in its CO2 output, over the next ten years. 

Thyssenkrupp has announced that it will invest €2 billion replacing the blast furnaces at its Duisburg site with hydrogen-based direct reduction plants. The new equipment will have capacity to produce up to 2.5 million tonnes of DRI per year. This will be used to boost the plant’s annual output of low-carbon steel by two million tonnes. The company expects to have the equipment operational by 2026. 

Danieli confirms that it has completed the overhaul of the Continuous Annealing Processing Line (CAPL) at Tata Steel’s Trostre works, in Wales. The project included complete replacement of the obsolete automation and electrical control systems. The company has also been hired to repair stoves feeding hot air to two of the blast furnaces at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot facility. 

North America 

Nucor expects the steel plate mill that it is constructing in Brandenburg, Kentucky, to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company broke ground on the US$1.7 billion facility in March 2019. It will have capacity to produce up to 1.2 million short tons of steel plate, per year. Nucor has also confirmed that it is investing US$200 million, over a five-year period, on the modernisation of its Berkeley steelworks, in Huger, South Carolina. 

Zekelman Industries has announced it is close to completing work at its latest facility in Rochelle, Illinois. The site includes four in line tube mills, with a combined annual output of over 300,000 short tons. An automated hot dipped galvanising line, capable of processing more than 100,000 short tons, per year, is also being installed. Initial production trials have already started on two of the lines. The company expects to commission the remaining equipment by January 2023. 

Maruichi Stainless Tube Texas Corporation, a newly formed joint-venture owned by Maruichi Stainless Tube and Maruichi Steel Tube, is to open a new facility in Seguin, Texas. It will produce bright annealed stainless steel tubes, for sale to customers in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Approximately US$75 million is being invested in the project, which is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2024. 

Asia 

Shandong Iron & Steel has commissioned a new blast furnace at its Linyi facility. The unit has capacity to produce up to 2.3 million tonnes of iron per year. It entered service in late-August following a three-month hot testing period. The company is now finalising work on two new basic oxygen converters, with a combined annual crude steel output of 2.7 million tonnes. The project was approved under the company’s capacity replacement programme. 

Construction has started at Jiyuan Iron & Steel’s blast furnace replacement project in Henan province. The unit will have an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tonnes. A second furnace, with the same capacity, will be added later, along with a basic oxygen converter and EAF.