Speaking during AK Steel’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Roger Newport said delivery of the samples fulfills the company’s promise to have the new material ready in the early part of 2017. 

And so far, the customers like what they are seeing, president and chief operating officer Kirk Reich told analysts during the call. 

“The NEXMET product so far has been extremely well received,” he said. “They're very interested, and I think we're getting the attention and the desired results that we thought we'd get.”

NEXMET 1000 and 1200 are billed as offering tensile strengths of 1,000 and 1,200 MPa and are designed for use in automotive structural components.  

Also during the call, executives were asked whether a restart of AK Steel’s Ashland Works in Kentucky might be in the cards, now that the market appears to be improving. 

But Newport said it depends on long-term market conditions, pointing out that a restart would bring back up 2 million to 2.5 million tons of iron capacity. 

He said the company is taking a wait-and-see approach, and, in the meantime, keeping the facility on hot idle – and spending a few million dollars per month to do so.