Kloeckner Metals Builds New Flat Rolled Facility
This plant serves the largest metals market in North America and targets aluminum, stainless steel, and other non-ferrous metal products used heavily in the architectural, food equipment and appliance industries.
Posted: February 25, 2017
After 19 years of operating a branch facility on the south side of Chicago out of a 100-year-old building, Kloeckner Metals Flat Rolled Group (Roswell, GA) has expanded and moved into a brand new 106,000 sq ft facility in University Park, IL. “We are very excited by the opportunity that this significant investment in our new University Park, IL, location provides,” said Russ Delaney, the company president. “We are now positioned to serve the largest metals market in North America with highly-customized supply chain systems for our value-added materials, including carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum. We have implemented a major digitalization of our supply chain strategy through the use of state-of-the-art equipment, processing capabilities, extensive technical support resources and the broadest and deepest product range available.”
“This move is the first phase in a planned strategy to differentiate ourselves from our competition, take advantage of a strong steel, aluminum and stainless steel market, and bring more value-added services to our existing and potential customers,” explained Tony Munno, their general manager. “We have moved past being perceived as just a flat rolled steel distributor and service center. This multi-million-dollar investment is not just brick and mortar. We are adding new processing equipment and rebuilding and remanufacturing existing ones to add the latest in controls and software that insure close tolerance, cut-to-length work is maintained. Additional crane capacity now permits us to handle mill coils up to 60,000 lb, which we were previously unable to do. This new plant location is also next to a railroad siding, so now we can receive material right off rail cars to allow us to provide the processing capability required for big steel mills.”
“Over 90 percent of our business in the central region here in the Chicago area is basically contract work,” added Vince Colorito, their vice president of sales for the central region. “Yes, we continue to service our agricultural, construction, mining, railway and automotive markets, but we are also targeting a wide array of non-ferrous metal products like aluminum and stainless steel that are used heavily in the architectural, food equipment and appliance industries. For that reason, we have added additional capabilities for pre-paint and other coatings. We signed exclusive agreements to provide PVD (physical vapor deposition) coated stainless steel, adding tremendous flexibility and creative options to the building, equipment and component design teams of our customers. We are focusing on taking advantage of the current trends towards the use of light gage pre-painted materials and we have directed some of the new investment in capital equipment at University Park towards those targets.”
“As the metals market continues to change and shift, we must have the foresight and flexibility to be a valued supplier that can not only have the systems in place to operate in the world of supply chain management, but also have the manufacturing capacity and capability to meet the necessary capacity requirements,” concluded Munno concludes. “Our new facility, with the capability to be doubled in size, will be the solution to many a customer’s needs, well into the future.”
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