Latrobe Specialty Steel Receives Award for Excellence from AMM

On June 22nd, Latrobe Specialty Steel’s VIM-VAR expansion won the inaugural American Metal Market Award for Excellence for Best Operational Improvement. This expansion supports growing demands for high quality vacuum melted steels from the American military, as well as from many commercial aerospace, power generation and petroleum exploration customers.

Latrobe Specialty Steel (LSS) put the needs of its customers first and tripled capacity for vacuum melted steel which reduced the lead times for these products from approximately 72 weeks to 20 weeks.

LSS along with its partners, Consarc, Rancocas, NJ and Continental Design and Management Group, Pittsburgh, PA installed one of the world’s largest Vacuum Induction Melting (VIM) furnaces and several Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR) furnaces starting in mid-December 2007. The first heat was melted in September 2008. Beginning work in Pennsylvania’s winter months, Latrobe excavated 40 feet below ground and built 100 feet above ground a 65,000-square-foot building. As soon as the roof was partially completed, assembly began of the 30-ton VIM using a modified design-and-build technique to overcome the elements and a compressed schedule.

The American Metal Market presented the Award for Excellence for Best Operational Improvement to LSS on the evening of June 22nd at a celebratory dinner at the AMM Steel Success Strategies Conference in New York City. Other finalists for the award included AK Steel Corp. and ArcelorMittal SA. This is the second award LSS has received for the VIM-VAR expansion this year. In January the Association for Iron & Steel Technology’s (AIST) presented LSS the 2009 Project Excellence Award.