Timken expands steelmaking capacity


US friction management and power transmission company Timken plans to increase its annual steelmaking capacity by 120,000 tons across its steel manufacturing facilities in Canton, Ohio.

This has been made possible by a series of improvements at its Harrison Steel Plant following the $60 million rolling-mill investment completed there in 2008.

Over the last two years, continuous improvement efforts at the Harrison plant have allowed Timken to achieve record output well beyond the new mill's original design.

Additional investments and crew additions over the next few months will enable a further increase in output and will allow the company to optimize production loads between its Harrison and Faircrest plants.

The changes will effectively create new capacity at both of these steel facilities to support growing demand for finished bar products and billets for tubing product which serve customers in the global industrial, oil and gas, and mobile markets.

"We are expanding our capacity to better serve customers who need high performance steel," said Sal Miraglia, president of Timken's steel business. "We understand that it takes a nimble company to ramp up for economic recovery and also adjust production to serve our customers' most critical, demanding application requirements. These changes will give us greater flexibility in our processes, support our efforts to improve delivery performance, and provide much-needed capacity to serve growing sectors of the global marketplace."

Miraglia said the plant will reach the full volume planned within six to 12 months, depending on testing, product mix, specifications and other customer requirements.