Officials from Charter Steel announced that the company will be starting construction on a new meltshop facility on the site of its SBQ bar and rod rolling mill in Cuyahoga Heights, near Cleveland, Ohio.

The $90-million expansion project includes an electric arc furnace, ladle metallurgical furnace, vacuum degassing unit, and billet casting facility. The new meltshop will initially provide 350,000 annual tons of SBQ melting and direct billet casting capacity to support Charter’s existing Cuyahoga Heights rolling mill.

Contracts for engineering, procurement and construction management contracts have been awarded to the Pittsburgh office of Lockwood Greene Engineers, Inc. Danieli will provide the electric furnace, ladle metallurgical furnace, vacuum degassing unit and billet caster.

"This new melting and casting facility has been designed to go beyond Charter Steel's current steelmaking capability," said John Mellowes, Chairman and CEO of Charter Manufacturing Co. "This expansion will allow us to provide cleaner steels with superior surface characteristics and minimal internal segregation to support a growing need for special bar quality steels that our customers require for their most demanding applications."

Mellowes said the new on-site meltshop facility in Cuyahoga Heights also provides the most economical solution for supplying the Charter Cuyahoga Heights rolling mill with the feedstock it needs. "We had a strong need for added capacity to support our Cleveland operations, and when considering transportation and the closeness to our markets, adding a melting facility to the 250-acre site there made the most economic sense," added Mellowes. "We're excited about the opportunity to expand in Cuyahoga Heights to help us maintain our position as a leading American supplier of carbon and alloy steel bar, rod and wire products." He added that the company would continue to purchase significant quantities of steel billets from outside sources in order to support specific customer needs.

Charter had purchased the Cuyahoga Heights SBQ mill from Birmingham Steel’s American Steel and Wire division in 2002. The current facility produces steel for makers of cold headed fasteners, bearings, specialty springs, cold forgings, cold finished bars and other components for a wide variety of industries. Charter officials say the new meltshop would be increased to produce up to 700,000 annual tons, when needed.

Expected to be completed by April 2006, the new meltshop, will employ 140 people when fully staffed. The expansion comes on the heels of several other major Charter Steel expansions in the past several years, as the company continues to look for new ways to better serve existing and potential customers. In November 2000, Charter expanded its full-service coil processing, wire drawing, and materials distribution capabilities with a new facility near Toledo, Ohio. In 2002, Charter Steel purchased the Cuyahoga Heights rolling mill to significantly increase its coil-making capacity and provide its customers with a wider range of products.

Charter Steel is a full-service supplier of fully processed coiled steel bar, rod, and wire in diameters from 0.140 to 1.56 inches and has manufacturing and distribution facilities in Wisconsin and Ohio. It was established in 1978 and is a division of Charter Manufacturing Co., Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Mequon, Wis. Additional divisions of Charter Manufacturing Co. include Charter Specialty Steel, located in Fond du Lac, Wis., and Charter Wire and Milwaukee Wire Products divisions, both located in Milwaukee.