Tata Steel Expands in Netherlands, Makes Super Steel in United Kingdom

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The world's No. 7 and Europe's No. 2 steelmaker, Tata Steel Limited (BSE:500470) (Mumbai), is investing $1.1 billion over five years at its operations in the Netherlands. The Dutch investment at the Ijmuiden works will expand liquid steelmaking capacity by 500,000 tons to 7.7 million tons annually and enhance product quality. The company has also entered into a strategic licensing agreement to produce super steels for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense at its Port Talbot steelworks.

The improvement and restructuring project will aim to enhance product quality and improve plant reliability through a balance of reducing costs and growth through investment. It will also see a loss of about 1,000 jobs at Ijmuiden over the next four years, while trying to avoid compulsory redundancies.

The Ijmuiden plant has the advantages of an ideal location, with its own port for bringing in raw materials and close proximity to the market. Staff training and development will be an element in establishing a platform for growth and significantly elevate the plant's position in the steel industry as a word-class steel plant.

Tata Steel Europe is also setting up a new steel-tubes manufacturing and processing facility at its Zwijndrecht plant in the Netherlands, with a focus on the automotive sector. It will make Tata Steel a fully integrated tubes supplier for the automotive sector, controlling the complete supply chain. Steel for the plant will come from Ijmuiden and Port Talbot.

The Port Talbot facility will manufacture Super Bainite, a new steel armor with outstanding ballistics properties. The armor has performed better than 'normal' steel armor. The steel was invented by Peter Brown of the UK Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Porton Down, England); Harry Bhadeshia, who is theTata Steel professor of metallurgy at Cambridge University; and Dr. Carlos Garcia-Mateo from Spain's National Center for Metallurgical Research (Madrid).

Various innovative cooling techniques are used in Bainite manufacturing. Combining drilling and hole-punching during the cooling process results in extreme hardness of the perforated plate. A ballistic performance at least twice that of conventional rolled homogenous armor is claimed for Super Bainite.

DSTI owns the patents for the chemical composition of the steel. A license between DSTI's licensing arm and Tata allows the steelmaker to manufacture the product in Europe for global exports.

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