2008 AISTech TOURS

* Tours are limited to 100 eacch
| Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation - SOLD OUT
| US Steel – Mon Valley Works - SOLD OUT

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation
Thursday, May 8, 7:30 a.m. departure
Return by 1:00 p.m.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, headquartered in Wheeling, West Virginia, is a producer of carbon flat rolled products for the construction, container, appliance, converter/processor, steel service center, automotive and other markets. The company's products include various sheet products such as hot rolled, cold rolled, hot dipped galvanized, electro-galvanized, black plate and electrolytic tinplate.

Wheeling Corrugating Company, a division of Wheeling-Pittsburgh, is also headquartered in Wheeling. Wheeling Corrugating manufactures fabricated steel and other products for the construction, highway and agricultural markets. These products include steel decking, light gauge roofing and siding, pre-engineered building systems, culvert, HVAC and painted sheet and coil products.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh holds a 50% interest in the Ohio Coatings Company joint venture. The remaining ownership interest is held by Dong Yang Tinplate Limited, South Korea. Ohio Coatings, located in Yorkville, Ohio, produces electrolytically tinplated steel, and Wheeling-Pittsburgh serves as the primary steel supplier to their new facility.

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel also owns a 36% interest in Wheeling-Nisshin, Inc., Follansbee, West Virginia. The remaining ownership interest is held by Nisshin Steel Company Limited, Japan. Wheeling-Nisshin manufactures hot-dipped galvanized, galvalume, galvannealed and aluminized products. Wheeling-Pittsburgh is the major steel supplier to this joint venture.

US Steel – Mon Valley Works
Tour: Thursday, May 8, 7:30 a.m. departure
Return by 1:00 p.m.

United States Steel Corporation is the largest steelmaker headquartered in North America. With an annual global steelmaking capability of 26.8 million net tons, we are engaged domestically in the production, sale and transportation of steel mill products, coke and taconite pellets; the management and development of real estate; and, through U.S. Steel Europe, the production and sale of steel mill products and coke, primarily for the central European markets.

Our Vision states it more simply: Making Steel. World Competitive. Building Value. We are, first and foremost, a steelmaker, and each of our varied operations relates in some way to that core business, which includes the making, shaping and treating of steel.

Tour facilities:

The hot end of Mon Valley Works is the historic Edgar Thomson Plant – Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill – built in 1875. Production facilities include two blast furnaces, a basic oxygen steelmaking facility supported by ladle metallurgical and vacuum degassing processing units, and dual strand slab caster.

Finishing facilities housed at the Irvin Plant include a hot strip mill, pickle lines, a cold reduction mill, a recoil line, and a coating line.

Our Processes:

Coke, an almost pure form of carbon, is combined with iron ore and limestone in the Edgar Thomson Plant’s blast furnaces, where the actual steelmaking process begins. The blast furnaces produce molten iron, which is transformed into steel at the Basic Oxygen Processing (BOP) shop. Every 40 minutes, a 500,000-pound heat of high quality steel – enough to make almost 5,000 refrigerators or 3,000 washing machines – leaves the BOP shop. Once ladle slag is removed from the molten steel, it is transferred to either the ladle metallurgy facility, where temperature and chemistry are refined, or to the decarburization facility (degasser), where the steel’s chemistry is further refined for cleaner, low carbon steel. The steel is then transformed into slab form at the continuous caster. The Edgar Thomson Plant casts more that 2.8 million tons of steel annually. At the caster, the strands are cut into slabs of preset length by a torch cutting machine, stamped for identification, inspected, and hot loaded onto railroad cars. Every day about 80 carloads of slabs are shipped to the Irvin Plant for further processing.

At the Irvin Plant, slabs are rolled into hot band, pickled in a controlled acid bath to remove scale, and cold reduced to a specified final thickness. The steel strip is then heat treated, or annealed, in a controlled atmosphere to make it strong and pliable. Most steel strip is temper rolled to improve the surface. Some strip is coated for special customer applications.