Corus is re-branded to the group name of Tata Steel Europe.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) announces a £9.5 million award to an academic and industrial consortium for the development of pre-finished steel products to reduce lighting requirements, support renewable technologies and facilitate water harvesting. Tata Steel, the lead industrial partner, will collaborate with leading universities to research and publish information about designing energy efficient buildings.
The project, known as SPECIFIC, will develop a portfolio of products that will turn buildings into power stations and generate over one third of the UK’s requirement for renewable energy by 2020. It is regarded by Tata Steel as a significant announcement for the development of hi-tech sustainable coated product.
A £7 million Sustainable Building Envelope Centre is under construction at Shotton Works in a partnership project with the Low Carbon Research Institute. The aim is to develop building components and systems based around renewable energy, primarily photovoltaic and solar air technologies, to improve the energy performance of buildings.
Shotton Works’ product range now includes Colorcoat ® Renew (High Reflect) SC, a bespoke liner with maximum reflectivity to reduce energy requirements, associated operational costs and CO 2 emissions. The product is suitable for interior roof and wall liner trays, cassette systems and composite panels in dry and unpolluted environments. It has been developed to use the Colorcoat ® building envelope to harness energy, by adding an additional perforated skin to the roof material. Heat is collected and drawn into the building, offering a potential saving of up to 50 per cent on heating costs.
Coated products currently account for 16 per cent. of Tata Strip Products UK’s order book. Hot rolled accounts for 55 per cent and cold rolled, 28 per cent. Tata has a 50 percent share of the UK’s strip products market and also delivers to selective European markets eg. Northern Spain, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France
Chromated hot dip galvanized strip is removed from Shotton Works’ product range following the installation of a chemical coater on the No.5 hot dip galvanizing line and strippable film equipment is installed, to service the Russian market. A second thermal oxidiser is installed on the No. 2 Colorcoat® line at the works, to reduce emissions.
Enhancements to annealing and temper rolling facilities increase the annual capacity of the Zodiac line at Tata Steel’s Llanwern Works to 500K tonnes, to meet the demand for highly formable automotive steels. The current annual output includes 420,000 tonnes of advanced high strength steels, alloyed with manganese, silicon and aluminium.
A new line is installed at Shotton Works to manufacture Coretinium®, strip steel skinned with a honeycomb plastic centre, for use in façade and rainscreen panels. The development is part of the Tata Building Systems business within the works.
Tata UK announce the re-location of Colorsteels, the UK’s leading centre for pre-finished steels, from Cross Keys in South Wales to Shotton. The business is part of Tata Steel Distribution, UK and Ireland, and has accredited distributor status for Colorcoat ® products.
The organic coating works at Tafarnaubach closes in December resulting in the transfer to Shotton of some 25,000 tonnes of business annually, mainly for the domestic appliance and manufactured goods sector.
The Tata Colors’ site in Turkey is to be equipped to produce laminated and co-laminated products, previously made at Tafarnaubach. Together with Maubeuge in France, this will enable Tata Steel to fully serve the domestic appliance and manufactured goods market.
Equipment for slitting, cutting to length and roll forming of finished coated products is transferred from the Colorsteels operation at Cross Keys and re-located in the former Cold Strip Mill at Shotton Works.
Shotton Works’ No. 1 Colorcoat® line is now processing orders for the domestic appliance sector. A switch to chrome-free alternatives for primers and pre-treatments which could impact on product performance is currently being looked at.
High-end Colorcoat ® products now make up 75 per cent. of Shotton Works’ OCS order book.
The European Coil Coating Association introduces an ECCA Premium ® label recognising quality, sustainability and aesthetics of pre-painted products used in building applications.
A surge in imports from China which reduces demand and selling prices leads to the mothballing of Shotton’s No.5 hot dip galvanizing line in November. Higher quality standards for the construction industry were also beyond the line’s capability.
The line has a rated weekly capacity of 8,000 tonnes but produced 10,400 tonnes during May 2005.
Tata Steel launches MagiZinc®, a new metallic coated strip steel product for complex car body parts. It has a galvanized coating of zinc alloyed with magnesium and aluminium and will be produced in the UK on the Zodiac line at Llanwern Works. Coating thickness ranges between 70-140 grammes per square metre on mild steel strip up to 2020mm wide. The unique composition is claimed to improve corrosion protection by 200 per cent compared with traditional zinc alloy coatings.
Tata Steel UK approves a £7.5 million investment for modification of the No. 1 Colorcoat line at Shotton Works’ to produce the next generation of coated products.
Galvanizing production at Shotton Works is currently averaging 7,800 tonnes a week and organic coating production, 6,000 tonnes. The construction sector accounts for 95 per cent of the total output with the on-site Panels and Profiles and Colorsteels businesses taking 70,000 tonnes.
With a requirement for 14 million litres a year, Shotton Works is now the largest user of industrial paints in the UK. Its colour database includes 300 shades of white and 70 shades of black.
Enhancement of the No.1 Colorcoat® line at Shotton Works is completed in preparation for the launch of the next generation of Prisma ® and hybrid pre-finished products for the construction industry. A three-layer organic coated product, believed to be a “first” for the European coil coating industry, is successfully produced in a single pass through the paint coating line during trials in July.
Development of a revolutionary three-layer Colorcoat Prisma ® pre-finished painted strip product wins Shotton Works the New Product Development of the Year award in Tata Steel Europe’s Innovista event.
Annual capacity of the Zodiac galvanizing line at Tata Steel UK’s Llanwern Works has been raised to 600,000 tonnes following recent upgrades to the plant.
As part of the Tata Steel Colors business, Shotton Works produces 400,000 tonnes of galvanized and pre-finished (painted) steel strip. This represents more than 10 per cent of Tata Steel UK’s sales, some forty per cent. of which are exported.
Tata Steel Colors is an international business involved in the development and manufacture of pre-finished steels for applications including roof and wall cladding, domestic appliances, consumer products, bakeware, specialist applications. It has manufacturing sites across Europe.
At Shotton Works, the operational plant currently includes a hot dip galvanizing line, which processes wide cold rolled steel strip sourced from Tata’s Port Talbot Works, two Colorcoat® lines, 10 profiling lines, two composite panel lines, and six further lines for processes including blanking and multi-strand slitting.
The construction industry remains the major end user for the works’ products.
Thirteen new products have been developed at the works in the past five years and differentiated products now make up more than 75 per cent. of the order book.
Innovations include Colorcoat Renew SC ® , an integrated solar air heating system to provide space heating and ventilation for all types of buildings, and Colorcoat Compass ®,a digital system for colour matching within the standard Colorcoat HPS200 Ultra® and Colorcoat Prisma ® pre-finished steel colour ranges.
The project, to prove the manufacturing process for applying dye solar cells onto coil coated steel strip as a precursor to volume production, is completed by Tata Steel Europe and photovoltaic specialists Dyesol.
The aim is to produce sheet steel “sprayed” with solar cells for use as energy and carbon saving roofing material for warehouses, offices and other buildings. Tata Steel currently supplies one hundred million square metres of roofing and wall material annually,
Cooper Coated Coil now supplies most of the world’s premium quality bakeware manufacturers with enough coated metal to make over 40 million pieces of bakeware each year. In a continuous process, the substrate steel or aluminium strip is cleaned, painted by roller, cured, cooled and recoiled.
The company has undertaken extensive testing of many types of non-stick coatings and different coating techniques over the past 10 years.
Tata Steel’s Shotton Works celebrates 125 years of hot dipped galvanizing and 54 years of paint coating.