TPT January 2007

From the AMERICAS

43 per cent premium to the NS Group closing price on 8 September. The new company is expected to have combined annual revenue of more than $4 billion. Ipsco, based in Regina, Saskatchewan, also has executive offices in Leslie, Illinois. It operates three steel mills and six pipe mills in the US and Canada. In other news of NS Group, the Newport, Kentucky-based company agreed to sell its Imperial Adhesives Inc unit to Sovereign Specialty Chemicals Inc (Chicago), which makes adhesives and sealants, for $27 million. › Northwest Pipe Co (Portland, Oregon) reported in October that it will furnish approximately $22 million worth of pipe to the Rio Colorado water transmission project in Baja California, Mexico. Manufacture of the 54" and 60" diameter steel pipe will be concentrated at the company’s plant in Adelanto, California, but its newly expanded Monterrey facility in Mexico will also contribute to the order for some 27 miles of product. Delivery to Administradora de Obras y Concesiones is to be completed by the end of September 2007. Northwest Pipe also said that it would produce approximately $27 million of large diameter pipe for the Seymour Capilano water filtration project near Vancouver, British Columbia. The $27 million Canadian order is for approximately 16,000ft of 120" diameter steel pipe, to go to the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Delivery of the pipe – which will be manufactured at the Adelanto plant as well as in Portland – is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2008. › Tubos Soldados Atlântico (Serra, Espirito Santo, Brazil) should be in production by now. According to Preston Pipe Report, the $75 million TSA facility will turn out 90,000 metric tons per year of pipe from 16" to 56" in diameter. The company is owned 60 per cent by Europipe (Mülheim, Germany); 20 per cent by Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes (Boulogne, France); and 20 per cent by Brazilian investors.

Venezuela, and a network of service centres in over 20 countries. Annual Tenaris production capacity in seamless is 3.3 million tons; in welded, 850,000t. Annual consolidated net sales are in excess of $6 billion. › Germany’s largest steel maker ThyssenKrupp AG plans to begin production of steel slabs at its Cia Siderúrgica do Atlántico plant in Brazil in the first half of 2009. On 29 September the steel unit’s president, Karl-Ulrich Koehler, said the steel slabs will be shipped from the mill, in the suburbs of in Rio de Janeiro, to Europe and North America. The company plans to buy its iron ore from the world’s No 1 producer, Cia Vale do Rio Doce , also Brazilian and a 10 per cent stakeholder in the ThyssenKrupp plant. › AK Steel (Middletown, Ohio) has started up a new large- diameter stainless steel tubing line at the Walbridge, Ohio plant of its wholly-owned subsidiary AK Tube LLC . Installation of the resistance-welding mill and associated equipment form part of a previously announced $8.5 million capital project to increase production capacity. The new mill, housed in an existing 330,000ft 2 facility at Walbridge, is intended to help heavy-duty truck manufacturers meet stringent new US Environmental Protection Agency standards for particulate matter emissions from heavy duty diesel engines. The new standards, which became effective 1 January, dictate higher peak engine exhaust temperatures, requiring the use of stainless steel. Diesel engine manufacturers have specified large- diameter stainless tubing for many of the exhaust components of the new engines. Before now, these components utilized bare and aluminium-coated carbon steel tubing. › Rocky Mountain Steel Mills (Pueblo, Colorado) is conducting an engineering study for a new rail mill to replace an existing facility that dates to the 1920’s and produces rails up to only 80ft long. The new rail line would be the first in the US able to turn out rails 330-480ft long – now produced only in Europe. Officials of the company said that the prospect of a new domestic mill is attractive to railroad companies. Ray Adams, chief financial officer for Oregon Steel Mills Inc , Rocky Mountain Steel’s Portland-based owner, told the Denver Post (30 October), “We’re waiting for the study to see how much it would cost.” › The Canadian steel maker Ipsco said it is buying NS Group Inc , an American maker of steel pipe and tube for oilfield applications. The purchase price of about $1.46 billion was at a

Dorothy Fabian , Features Editor (USA)

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J ANUARY /F EBRUARY 2007