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Nucor Crawfordsville – and Thin Slab Casting – Turn 30
08/13/2019 - Nucor Corp. recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first EAF mill in South Carolina. But another of its mills that has an important place in the mini-mill revolution also is celebrating a milestone anniversary this summer: Nucor’s sheet mill in Crawfordsville, Ind., USA, turned 30.
Crawfordsville is the site of the first thin-slab caster. Although now a mature technology, there were doubts aplenty about it at the time.
As The New York Times reported in 1991:
“It was fraught with problems and Nucor was losing as much as US$1 million a week in start-up costs. Indeed, many in the industry — notably the larger steel producers — scoffed at the process, saying it had too many imperfections to make it attractive.”
Nucor, however, persevered, and commercialized what is now an industry standard.
In a ceremony at the mill, Nucor chief executive John Ferriola recalled those early days and said it was through determination of Nucor teammates that it was able to bring the caster into operation.
“Nucor had a couple hundred people here in Crawfordsville, proving that it could work,” he said, according to the (Crawfordsville, Ind.) Journal Review newspaper. “And now, today, this facility makes some of the highest quality steels that go into our cars.”
