Thomasville’s selection by Canada’s Lakeside Steel as the site for a $40 million steel pipe mill underscores Alabama’s strong position as a steel supplier.
Lakeside officials say a major advantage of the Thomasville location is proximity to the $ 5 billion ThyssenKrupp steel mill complex an hour’s drive away in north Mobile County and two other steel mills within a 220-mile radius. Nucor Steel, one of the nation’s largest, has three mills in Alabama – Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Decatur.
Lakeside is poised to begin making steel pipe and casings for the oil and gas industry in early 2012. The $40 million, 783-foot-long facility will employ 120 to make some 192,000 tons of pipe annually, according to published reports.
“This was a fantastic location for us to have options for steel suppliers,” said Chris Roik, vice president for Lakeside’s Alabama operations, according to a published report.
Thomasville, in Clarke County, is 100 miles north of the port city of Mobile.
Meanwhile, Metals USA, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will build a rail-serviced steel center adjacent to the Thomasville mill to conduct steel slitting and warehousing.
Lakeside’s separate heat-treatment and pipe-end finishing facility just north of Thomasville is expected to be in operation by February 2012. Located at a former sawmill site, the $17.5 million finishing plant will employ 160 to heat-treat pipe and casings, and finish the ends with thread, allowing pipe to be connected.
The two Lakeside-Thomasville plants will allow the Welland, Ontario company to double production of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) designed primarily for oil and gas drilling.