“This announcement demonstrates SSAB’s commitment to our Alabama operations and to our valued customer base in North America, as well as those customers we serve globally,” said SSAB Americas president Chuck Schmitt. 

“With this planned investment, we not only increase our production, but improve our quality and efficiency performance as well.”

The company said it is eyeing a number of targeted improvements to its formatting, blasting and painting, and shipping operations to boost its Q&T capacity. The upgrades would eliminate production bottlenecks and lift the plant’s Q&T capacity 33% to about 440,000 tons annually. 

“SSAB is a global leader in Q&T steels, and we have largely driven market growth through application development together with customers. Over the past 20 years, we have increased Q&T volumes by an average of 7% a year. There is great market potential as Q&T penetration is still relatively low in, for example, North and South America, where we now plan to increase capacity,” said SSAB president and chief executive Martin Lindqvist.  

Additionally, SSAB is planning a parallel project in which it will install a new, accelerated cooling system on the rolling mill. 

“This will improve the potential to grow volumes of more advanced premium products, while reducing the need for alloys,” the company said. 

“The investment has been designed to include the potential to build additional Q&T capacity through direct quenching similar to the technology currently used at SSAB’s production facilities in Finland and Sweden,” it added.