ArcelorMittal Steel Truck Frame Vies With Aluminum

By Sonja Elmquist

ArcelorMittal (MT) said a new auto frame can cut the weight of a pickup chassis by almost a quarter, the latest step by the largest steelmaker to compete with aluminum for use in energy-efficient vehicles.
The company’s new range of steel products for automakers can save as much as 384 pounds (174 kilograms), or 23 percent of the weight, of a pickup’s cab, box, frame and closures, it said yesterday. Such a reduction would ensure pickups meet European Union emission standards and similar rules being developed in the U.S., Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal said.
Steelmakers have increased their efforts to supply stronger, lighter
metal to auto customers after Ford Motor Co. opted for an aluminum body for its F-150 pickup, its top-seller. New York-based Alcoa Inc. and Novelis Inc., the U.S. unit of India’s Hindalco Industries Ltd., are among aluminum producers adding capacity to supply car and truck bodies.
Competition between steel and aluminum “has intensified,” Lou Schorsch, ArcelorMittal’s chief executive officer for the Americas, said in an interview yesterday at the company’s jointly owned plant in Calvert, Alabama. “We give as good as we get.”
The Calvert factory is one example of how U.S. steelmakers, faced with a global oversupply of crude steel, are trying to boost profitability by focusing on higher-value, specialized products.

Plant Investment

ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. (5401) jointly acquired the plant in February from Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG for $1.55 billion. The mill takes raw steel from a ThyssenKrupp plant in Brazil and ArcelorMittal sites in Mexico and the U.S. and uses heat and other treatments to add strength and flexibility.
The Calvert plant’s steel sheet is sold to the automotive industry while it also supplies makers of pipes used in the energy industry.
ArcelorMittal and its Japanese partner are spending $46.7 million to expand the plant’s slab yard and its advanced high-strength steel capacity, they said in a separate statement yesterday.
While aluminum remains much more expensive pound-for-pound than steel, its large-scale use in body panels and chassis construction is no longer the preserve of high-end automakers. Ford said in January it would cut 700 pounds from the newest version of the F-150 partly by substituting aluminum for steel.
In 2011, ArcelorMittal announced a steel frame for passenger cars that was 22 percent lighter than its previous offering. The company said yesterday the predicted weight reduction for pickups using its latest “S-in motion” products would eliminate 14 grams of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions per kilometer.
ArcelorMittal supplies carmakers including Ford and General Motors Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.