McLouth Steel


McLouth Steel is a former integrated steel company. The company was once the ninth largest steelmaker in the United States and had three locations. The first plant was in Detroit, Michigan, the second in Trenton, Michigan, and the third, a cold mill, in Gibraltar, Michigan. The Detroit and Trenton plants have been demolished, while the Gibraltar plant has been purchased and restarted by Ferrolux.

Detroit Complex

This complex was built in 1934 by Donald B. McLouth, a Detroit scrap dealer, as a small conversion mill on Livernois Avenue in Detroit, MI. Desiring additional options for steel, partial financing was provided by General Motors. In its later years, the plant was revamped to produce only stainless steel, eventually being bought by Jones and Laughlin Steel Company in 1981.
The Detroit mill initially consisted of a small reversing hot rolling strip mill with a slab heating furnace. The original hot strip mill was known as the "Coffee Grinder" from the sounds the mill would make. In 1938, the company brought online a single 4-high reversing cold reducing mill with ancillary facilities. Throughout the next few years, modifications were made to the equipment and eventually, the company had the capacity to roll 108,000 net tons per year of hot rolled products and 60,000 net tons of cold rolled steel products.
In 1947, McLouth Steel began rolling stainless steel. Two single stand reversing cold reducing mills were installed with the related supplementary equipment. In 1954, $6,000,000 of the $100,000,000 expansion plan for the new Trenton plant was used to install two 4-high reversing cold rolling mills. With this new addition to the Detroit plant, the stainless steel production increased to 52,000 net tons per year.
The Detroit plant was a finishing facility for sheet and strip products only. Principal operating units were two., 4-high cold reduction mills, a cold anneal and pickle line, a temper mill, two slitting lines, and a coil polisher. The two 50in. reduction mills were essentially identical. Both were installed in 1953 by United and had a combined annual capacity of 120,000 tons. The cold anneal and pickle line were installed in 1975 by Production Machinery. The line consisted of an entry end washing section to remove rolling oils, an open air annealing furnace, and three acid pickling tanks followed by rinsing and drying units. Paper was interleaved between the coil wraps at the exit take up reel to avoid surface abrasion.
Coil product was usually shipped from the Detroit plant via truck.
The Detroit plant was demolished in 2018.

Trenton Complex

In 1948, McLouth Steel started its $100 million expansion program by purchasing riverfront property in Trenton, MI, with General Motors providing a $25 million loan. Purchasing war surplus equipment from a Chicago mill, the first major construction program started soon afterward. The site was laid out and four sixty ton electric arc furnaces were installed. Soaking pits, a blooming mill, a Steckel mill, a down-coiler and finishing equipment were installed. The first ingots were poured in 1949, and McLouth was soon established as a growing factor in the marketplace.
A few years later, in 1954, the Trenton Plant was dedicated and McLouth Steel became able to produce iron as an integrated steel mill. Number One blast furnace was constructed with a capacity of 1250 tons a day. The three original 60 ton basic oxygen furnace vessels were installed and McLouth became the first plant in the United States to make steel via the basic oxygen process. Adding to the melt shop were two 200 ton electric arc furnaces. The reversing Steckel mill was replaced by a six stand continuous hot strip rolling mill and a roughing stand was added to complement the blooming mill. More soaking pits were installed as well as a plant to supply the BOP with oxygen. Two pickle lines were added along with the slitters.
1958 saw another major expansion of the plant. A new blast furnace was constructed, two 110 ton BOP vessels, and the related support equipment for the BOP and blast furnaces also had their capacity increased. Gas cleaning systems were installed for the melt shop. Two Rust slab reheat furnaces were installed to handle stainless steel, as well as the massive grinder and slab unpilers. The grinders, unpilers, and the pusher/bumper units for the two furnaces were supplied by Composite Forgings, Inc.
Between 1960 and 1964, one more 110 ton BOP vessel was added, bringing the 110 ton vessel count to three. McLouth became the first company to use computer controls on a hot strip mill on November 1, 1962. Significantly, the first "straight stick" slab caster was installed during this period. It was the first in the United States.
Profitable operations as well as market demand prompted a major commitment to build a Continuous Casting department in 1967 with the announcement of four curved mold continuous casting strands and six lines of three induction slab reheaters. Two additional 110 ton BOP vessels were also added to replace old and obsolete equipment. With these improvements to McLouth's steel making process, McLouth became the first steel mill to eventually produce 100% of its product by the continuous casting process, which added significantly to the efficiency of the operations and improved the quality of the finished product.
The plant was sold in 1996 to Detroit Steel Company. Up to the early 2000s, Detroit Steel primarily brought in outside steel, pickled it, and sold it. In the summer of 2009, after several failed start-up attempts, the Trenton complex had its electric distribution infrastructure removed. In 2017, the facility entered foreclosure after owners failed to pay $3.7 million in back taxes. In 2018, MSC Land Co. purchased the land, entering into an agreement to demolish all buildings and to perform some remediation. In May 2019, the site was put on EPA's Superfund National Priorities List. The site is currently undergoing demolition.

Trenton Plant Assets

Iron Making

Oxygen Process shop
A.O.D shop
The entire steelmaking building, with the exception of the lime storage building, was demolished in 2005. The lime storage building was brought down with explosives on April 18th, 2010.

Continuous Casting

Pilot plant
Concast department
Main building was demolished in 2006.

Hot Strip Mill

Furnaces
Soaking pits
Reheat Furnaces
Eighteen induction slab heating furnaces
Walking beam furnace
Rolling
Blooming Mill
Roughing Mill
Six Stand Rolling mill
Two down-coilers

Finish Departments

Pickle Line
Slitters
Pickle line and #5 slitter remained until final demolition of the plant.

Gibraltar Complex

In 1954, McLouth announced the construction of a cold rolling facility in Gibraltar, Michigan, close to the Trenton Plant. This facility has a four stand continuous cold rolling strip mill, annealing furnaces, two skin pass finishing mills and other ancillary equipment for further processing of cold rolled steel coils.
The property the company acquired was once owned by the Gibraltar Steel Corporation. The total area was around of land along the river bordering Trenton. Original plans called for five additional blast furnaces dependent upon the completion of the All American Channel, a proposed channel through parts of Gibraltar. Without the channel, ore and coal haulers could not bring in the required raw materials. McLouth failed to get the proper financing to construct another integrated mill, so plans were drawn up for a stand-alone cold rolling mill.
There was a major fire that destroyed most of the pickling tower in 1970.
The plant was operated under Detroit Cold Rolling from 1996 until it was later sold to Steel Rolling Holdings in 2006. The plant was restarted by SRH, and was later purchased by Ferrolux. Ferrolux has since invested heavily into the Gibraltar facility.

Gibraltar Plant Assets

Pickle Line

Pickle liquor
Tower

Tandem Mill

Mill Stands
Rolls
Reduction Capability

Annealing

60" Lee Wilson Bases
80" Swindell Bases
Both furnaces used natural gas fuel.

Skin Mill

Two 2-high skin pass mills.
Roll sizes

Finishing Departments

Customer Service Line
Flying Shear Line
Coil Slitting Line

Legacy and Achievements

First Basic Oxygen Furnace in North America

McLouth Steel was the first company in North America to use the basic oxygen process, a process now common in the steel industry.
The original vision for the Trenton Plant included Bessemer furnaces to supplement its electric furnaces. Trenton's city ordinances against pollution would not allow use of a Bessemer furnace, forcing McLouth to take a different approach. McLouth turned to the rest of the world to search for a solution, finding in Austria the basic oxygen furnace.
The technology not yet operating on a scale large enough for American steelmakers, McLouth gambled on an attempt to scale the unproven basic oxygen process to its needs. By 1954, McLouth's original 60 ton furnaces were in action. As the process was refined and perfected, this technology enabled McLouth to average 30% higher profits than its competitors between 1960 and 1966. The process was adopted by many large steelmakers in the years following McLouth's venture.

First Online Computer Control

Online computer control of steel making processes became a reality with the first use of computers on a hot strip mill in 1962. McLouth Steel used a General Electric 312 computer for gauge control on the finishing train of a semi-continuous mill. The aim was to set up the initial roll gap and then establish correct gauge as soon as the head end of the strip emerged onto the runout table. The finishing train started running under continuous computer control on November 1, 1962.
"Probably the most exciting application of the GE 312 was to the hot strip mill of McLouth Steel Co. in Michigan. It was a difficult design inasmuch as each step in the process had to be varied on the basis of the measured values of the previous step. This required continuous high speed feedback to set the six different hot stands with absolute accuracy and reliability being essential; an error at one point could be magnified at the next, causing an entire process to go out of control. Fortunately, the GE 312 met the challenge." H. Oldfield, General Manager of the GE Computer Department.
The Solid State circuitry of a GE 312 computer was composed of 2500 diodes, 2500 transistors, and 12,000 resistors, but no magnetic core memory. There were 20 binary digits per word or per instruction. All arithmetic was fixed point. Numbers were 19 bits plus the associated positive or negative sign, not a very big number range when expressed in decimal form, just -524,287 to +524,287. The GE 312 was designed by A. Spielberg of the GE Computer Department, newly formed in 1957.

First Continuous Caster

McLouth Steel was the first plant in North America to cast 100% of its steel by the continuous caster method, a method now commonly used in the steel industry.
In May 1962, McLouth personnel visited the Dillingen Steel Works in Germany, where continuously cast slabs larger than 100 square inches were first cast. Some sixteen months later, McLouth was operating a "straight stick" casting machine, the first in the United States.

Pilot Plant

In 1963, a full size single strand, vertical casting machine was added to the original Oxygen Process Shop. The machine was operated for five years, helping to pioneer techniques that would be useful when the larger four strand shop was constructed in 1968. The pilot shop was operated mostly during the day, while the afternoon and midnight shifts would repair, modify, or tune the machine.
Initial slab sizes were 8" x 36", afterwards they began to cast bigger slabs by about 10" increments up to 10" x 52". There was a noted improvement in quality, as with the ability to cast using larger molds. The pilot plant was limited to about 50 "heats", from the original OP shop. Over the course of operation, the pilot plant cast a little over 300,000 tons of steel.
The five year run of the plant produced the opportunity to help develop both the equipment and casting techniques. Extensive work was performed on the design of the molds and the casting speed relative to the slab quality.

Casting Plant Description

Four single-strand curved mold casting machines cast around 3000 tons per day. Only two casting machines would normally cast at one time, and many people questioned the need for four units. McLouth felt that the third caster was there for coordination reasons, while the fourth was a reserve for maintenance shutdowns. Ladles were moved by overhead bridge cranes to the casting machines, which could handle two at a time.
The record slab length for the plant was between May 9–11, 1972. The slab was 44" wide and long, total weight was around 8,500 tons from 75 ladles. Strand two was used.

First Use of Slab Induction Heating

McLouth Steel's decision to cast unusually thick slabs led them to reheat the slabs inductively. The whole setup was difficult to undertake, as well as uneconomical to use. The giant heaters resembled upside-down toasters, and made a loud buzzing sound when in operation.
The nature of the induction heating process is such that heat input to the slab is not restricted to the surface, but actually penetrates into the slab. The depth of penetration is determined by the frequency of the electrical power supply and the metallurgical makeup of the steel.
Although induction heating was well established as an effective and economical process fulfilling many types of heating requirements, it had never been seriously considered for heating anything like the 12" thick by 60" wide by 26' long, 30 ton slabs McLouth wanted to produce. The fact that they wanted over 600 tons of steel heated per hour did nothing to help the situation.
Several induction heating companies were contacted to determine if they would be interested in a project of this magnitude. Just one company expressed interest. Ajax Magnethermic from Warren, Ohio. Ajax informed McLouth that they had a new coil design which would be capable of doing the job. After discussions, McLouth entered into a shared cost, joint development venture with the company to design, build, and test a prototype coil system.
Early in 1965, several small 12" thick slabs of rimmed steel were repetitively heated in a prototype 1,000 kW rectangular coil. The tests proved that cold 12" thick slabs could be heated to rolling temperature in less than one hour.
The next year, McLouth ordered 21 heaters as part of a $105 million program expected to be completed by the summer of 1968. The program expanded the hot metal facilities with a four strand caster and the new induction heaters. Production capacity at the plant was raised from 1,800,000 tons a year to 2,400,000.
A full-size computer system was installed to automatically switch heaters on or off as required to rebalance the phase loading and to remove the threat of a 120 KV line outage. Detroit Edison permitted McLouth a maximum phase imbalance of 43 MW. The computer shut off heaters if a limit was reached and provided printouts of hourly demands, alarms, engineering logs, as well as maintenance logs.
Overall, the system was a novel idea, but really only worked on paper. Auto transformer failures were frequent, as were bus connection failures. When all 18 heaters were running at full capacity, McLouth Steel was Michigan's second largest consumer of electricity. The environmental impact was very low due to a closed water cooling system and heaters being shut off during non-operating hours.

Closing

McLouth Steel's 1996 demise can be attributed to a mixture of causes.
McLouth only produced flat-rolled steel, with 75% of its customers being automotive. Its attempts to diversify, including purchase of trucking/coke/ore companies, did not generate the revenue or savings projected. Multiple recessions, cheap overseas steel, and lessened steel use in cars and trucks also harmed the company.
McLouth was "top-heavy" with a ratio of 1 supervisor to every 4 workers, while the union desired 1 supervisor to every 15 workers. McLouth had an extremely generous wage package, something the union was cooperative about reducing in later years as the need to cut costs increased.
In the spirit of its old slogan, "Pioneers in Steel Technology", McLouth often led the way in implementation of new processes while other steelmakers capitalized on McLouth absorbing those costs. Competitors then optimized the process, outdoing McLouth's production/efficiency. Aging and incorrectly-sized equipment paired with low employee morale/productivity in the 1980s/90s subsequently lowered the quality of steel, creating reputation problems.