Columbus Stainless' cold rolling mill commences operation

Columbus Stainless’ cold rolling mill commences operation

Columbus Stainless, a subsidiary of Acerinox SA recently announced that it has completed cold rolling mill at its plant, located in Middleburg, South Africa and that the production has started at the mill. The new Sendzimir mill with a capacity of 1.5 million tons was supplied and installed by Japanese consortium of Sojitz, Mitsubishi, Hitachi and Toshiba. The production at the mill started two months ahead of schedule. In the second phase, upgrade of annealing and pickling lines was implemented by Voestalpine Industries, which was also completed one month ahead of schedule. Acerinox acquired 64% stake in Columbus Stainless in 2002 and announced an investment plan for the mill, covering a new cold rolling mill and the subject upgrades. The planned investment was worth Rand 1.100 million ($167 million). With the new mill, cold rolling capacity of Columbus Stainless will be 400'000 tons per annum. Moreover, the proportion of value-added products in its product mix will increase.