Corus plans to invest £8 million at a Scottish steel plant to help meet demand for heavy plate products. The investment at the company’s Dalzell steel mill, in Motherwell, includes installing a new 3500-tonne press and handling equipment, as well as an upgrade to the plant’s existing press and other manufacturing equipment.
Corus is also recruiting 60 workers—11 in Dalzell and 49 at its nearby Clydebridge plant—following an upturn in orders for some of the plants’ specialist steel products, including in the oil and gas, power generation, mining, and construction sectors. The new roles are temporary, Corus noted, but may become permanent if market conditions continue to improve.
The investment will more than double the plant’s capacity to produce heavy leveled plate.
Colin Timmins, Plant Manager of the Dalzell and Clydebridge steelworks, said, “Steel demand is not back to what it was before the recession, but Corus has been working hard to target new markets and this investment in both people and equipment will help us to take advantage of the strengthening demand we are seeing in a number of sectors.”
Corus expects to further strengthen its Dalzell workforce when the new 3500-tonne flattening press is commissioned in summer 2011.
Chris Elliot, Corus Director of Product Marketing, said, “In the U.K. alone, we estimate that about 6 million tonnes of steel will be needed over the next 10 years to make the foundations and tower structures for offshore wind turbines.”
Engineers from Corus Process Engineering, in Workington, Cumbria, will be manufacturing handling equipment for the Dalzell plant and will be managing the installation of the new flattening press.
Corus is Europe's second largest steel producer. With main steelmaking operations primarily in the U.K. and the Netherlands, Corus supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, mechanical engineering, and other markets worldwide. It is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, one of the world’s top 10 steel producers. The combined enterprise has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 80,000 employees across four continents.