May 31 2007
ThyssenKrupp Stahl-Service-Center GmbH, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG, will serve important markets in Eastern Europe from a service center in Poland in the future. The center in the southern Polish town of Dabrowa Górnicza near Katowice was opened on May 31, 2007. Under the name ThyssenKrupp Stal Serwis Polska it will produce 125,000 tons of hot and cold-rolled coil and coated slit strip per year for customers in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Hungary and Ukraine.
The new service center reflects the strategic importance of Eastern Europe, a region in which the company aims to expand. “In Poland and its southern neighbors alone, demand for processed steel products in 2005 was 2.2 million tons per year and this is expected to rise to 3.7 million tons by 2010. That's a growth rate of more than eleven percent," said Dr. Jost A. Massenberg, Member of the Executive Board of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG, at the opening ceremony.
The main customers targeted in the Eastern European markets place particularly high demands on the surface quality and dimensional accuracy of processed steel products. They include car producers, automotive suppliers, stamping plants and appliance manufacturers and suppliers. So far ThyssenKrupp Stahl-Service-Center has supplied around 120 customers in the region from its German sites. The new steel service center in Poland will bring the company closer to its customers and ensure even faster service.
The centerpiece of the new facility will be a slitting line to process flat-rolled steel from ThyssenKrupp Steel production into slit strip. The slitting line can process coils in weights up to 30 tons and strip thicknesses from 0.4 to 4.0 millimeters. The strength of the material can be up to 1,400 megapascals. Materials which such high strength levels are used for example for side impact protection in car doors. The slit strip will be available in widths from 25 to 1,800 millimeters.
Built in only eight months, the steel service centre is located under the roof of a 75,000 square meter service and logistics complex owned by the ThyssenKrupp Group. As well as ThyssenKrupp Stal Serwis Polska, it houses the companies ThyssenKrupp Energostal, a Polish subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Services, and ThyssenKrupp Stainless Poland, a company from the Stainless segment of the ThyssenKrupp Group. Close cooperation in the Group network will create synergies and opportunities to share know-how which the companies will exploit intensively.