ThyssenKrupp Service Acier has begun operation of a new slitting line.

Capable of processing steels with strengths of up to 1400 mega-pascals, the new line was installed in response to increasing demand from automotive customers for high-strength steels. These materials can be used to build lighter cars with lower fuel consumption. More than 65 percent of ThyssenKrupp Service Acier’s production is supplied to automotive OEMs and suppliers in France.

“The French market is of strategic importance for ThyssenKrupp Steel. We are underlining this by our investments in the processing and distribution of our steels by ThyssenKrupp Service Acier,” said Dr. Jost A. Massenberg, Member of the ThyssenKrupp Steel Executive Board.

France is Europe’s second-biggest auto market, producing around 3.5 million vehicles per year.

ThyssenKrupp Service Acier, a French subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Stahl-Service-Center GmbH, was founded in August 2004 by the merger of the two steel service centers — Coste SA and Laminoirs et Ateliers de Jeumont SAS. In addition to the site at Fosses, not far from Paris, the company has a second plant in Jeumont on the border with Belgium. In Fosses, ThyssenKrupp Service Acier operates two wide slitters and a slitting line for narrow strip. The Jeumont plant has two wide slitters, two narrow strip slitters, a cut-to-length line and an edging machine for processing slit strip edges.

The ThyssenKrupp steel service center group has six processing operations and two associate companies in Germany plus facilities in the UK, France and Spain. There are plans to establish further sites in Eastern Europe.

ThyssenKrupp Steel’s European steel service centers are combined in the Steel Service operating group. Including associate companies, the group has some 1,000 employees and generated sales of around 1.2 billion euros in fiscal 2004/2005. The centers process hot- and cold-rolled metallic and organic coated carbon steels and stainless steels. In addition they also supply processed products made from ThyssenKrupp Steel’s noise-insulating composite material BONDAL^®.