ThyssenKrupp Service Acier: new slitting line for high-strength steels

ThyssenKrupp Service Acier, a French subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Stahl-Service-Center GmbH, has begun operation of a new GEORG slitting line, which can also process modern multi-phase steels with strengths of up to 1,400 megapascals. With this, the company has responded to increasing demand from automotive customers for high-strength steels. These materials can be used to build lighter cars with lower fuel consumption. More than 65 percent of ThyssenKrupp Service Acier’s production is supplied to automotive OEMs and suppliers in France.

“The French market is of strategic importance for ThyssenKrupp Steel. We are underlining this with our investments in the processing and distribution of our steels by ThyssenKrupp Service Acier,” said Dr. Jost A. Massenberg, member of the ThyssenKrupp Steel Executive Board, at the start-up of the new slitting line at the Fosses plant. France is Europe's second-biggest auto market, producing around 3.5 million vehicles per year.

ThyssenKrupp Service Acier was founded in August 2004 by the merger of the two steel service centers Coste S.A. and Laminoirs et Ateliers de Jeumont S.A.S. In addition to the site at Fosses, not far from Paris, the company has a second plant in Jeumont on the border with Belgium. In Fosses ThyssenKrupp Service Acier operates two wide slitters and a slitting line for narrow strip. The Jeumont plant has two wide slitters, two narrow strip slitters, a cut-to-length line and an edging machine for processing slit strip edges. Together with their subsidiaries, the ThyssenKrupp steel service centers process hot- and cold-rolled, metallic- or organic-coated carbon and stainless steels. In addition, they also supply processed products made from ThyssenKrupp Steel’s noise-insulating composite material BONDAL.

ThyssenKrupp Steel’s European steel service centers are combined in the Steel Service Europe operating group. Including equity interests, the group has some 1,000 employees and generated sales of around 1.2 billion euros in fiscal 2004/2005. The ThyssenKrupp steel service center group has six processing operations, plus interests in Herzog Coilex and ThyssenKrupp Maßblech in Germany, as well as facilities in the UK, France and Spain. There are plans to establish further sites in Eastern Europe.
 
(Press release, November 2005)