Nucor Hopes New Casting Technology Is the Wave of the Future

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The following is an advisory by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas) Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE) (Charlotte, N.C.) is well underway with construction of the new Castrip Steel Strip Casting Mill at its Crawfordsville, Indiana Hot Steel Mill. Start up of the facility is expected in May of 2002 and is being constructed at a cost of $150 million.

The Castrip process directly casts steel into sheets bypassing intermediate rolling mills used at larger facilities. If the technology proves successful, it could spawn a new age of minimills producing in the 500,000 ton per year range and could significantly reduce per ton production costs for steel producers. This positions Nucor to continue its leadership roll in the development of minimill technology, where smaller less capitally intensive minimills continue to take market share from larger integrated steel makers.

The new venture, known as Castrip LLC (Charlotte, N.C.), is a joint venture between Nucor, BHP Corporation out of Australia and Ishikawajim-Harima Heavy Industries Company of Japan. This will be the first commercial scale production using the castrip process. The process has been demonstrated at a plant in Australia since 1995. Castrip LLC holds 1,500 patents relating to cast strip technologies.

Nucor is a leader in minimill technology and is the largest steel recycler in the U.S., recycling close to 10 million tons annually. Nucor operates ten steel mills in the U.S. and numerous downstream plants.