GFG Alliance, the parent company of the international industrial and metals group Liberty House, has announced that it has completed the purchase of Keystone Consolidated Industries (KCI) from Contran Corporation, for $320 million. The first step of the acquisition was previously reported by SteelOrbis, when the parties signed a binding agreement in early December last year.
The company stated that the addition of KCI to Liberty Steel USA creates one of the country’s largest producers of wire rod and provides a platform for GFG to grow its US greensteel capacity to five million mt per year by 2020.
According to the company statement, the acquisition strengthens Liberty’s position in the US market with the addition of a top-producing wire rod facility with a 1.1 million mt capacity electric arc furnace (EAF), the market leading agricultural fence products of RedBrand® industrial wire, an MBQ/SBQ bar mill, three welded wire reinforcement mesh facilities and a PC strand facility.
KCI will be combined with Liberty Steel Georgetown to give Liberty Steel USA a total of up to 1.8 million mt per year of EAF melting capacity, 2 million mt wire rod rolling capacity per year, and over 1,300 employees. The combined company will have operations in Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, New Mexico, Texas and Georgia.