Engineers in Nucor have the opportunity, from day one, to drive the success of our world-class technology. Nucor's lean management structure provides engineers the freedom to make decisions, take risks, and make changes without big committees and red tape. Your talent drives our innovations. Some engineers and metallurgists in Nucor spend their careers driving our technology and innovations. However, many engineers find that they can leverage their technical skills along with their leadership abilities by moving into supervisory and managerial roles. The majority of Nucor's leadership comes from technical backgrounds. If you're asking yourself, "What can an engineer do at Nucor?" we've got the answer. You can change an entire industry through innovations or you can even become CEO.
SEE OUR "PEOPLE" SECTION FOR REAL LIFE EXAMPLESCastrip Process
Castrip LLC, a joint venture of Nucor, BHP Steel Ltd. of Australia and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) of Japan, completed its first coil on May 11, 2002, and has ramped up to daily production at the Crawfordsville, Indiana, Sheet Mill.
Castrip produces steel in a thin strip directly from molten steel without the need for expensive, energy-intensive rolling. It also produces a ton of steel with a lot less environmental impact than standard methods, lowering energy, natural gas and water consumption.
The process allows steel to be produced from a "micro mill," a factory whose steel-making operation is shorter than five city buses, one-sixth the length of a typical mini mill.
"You could fit the whole facility, including the melt shop, in our employee parking lot," says John Ferriola, chief operating officer of steelmaking operations for Nucor.
The smaller size yields another crucial benefit: significantly smaller capital costs - about one-tenth the investment of an integrated steel mill. That's why Merrill Lynch's senior industry analyst for metals and mining, Daniel Roling, has said that if the Castrip micro mill is successful, it will "definitely change the dynamics of the business."
"This is the Holy Grail of steel making," Crawfordsville general manager Ron Dickerson says. "People have been trying to do this for 150 years."
Since 1995, BHP's Australian pilot plant has made about 35,000 tons of steel using the method, known as strip-casting. But the Crawfordsville facility was the first to attempt to adapt the process to an industrial scale.
Iron Replacement Strategies
Rising scrap prices have focused a lot of attention on iron replacement technologies. Nucor has been executing and refining an iron replacement strategy for years, long before scrap prices began their jump. The logic is straightforward. All of Nucor's mills make steel from a mix of scrap and iron. The company has been hard at work developing alternative low-cost sources of iron, beyond simply buying it from suppliers.
Iron replacement has gradually become a bigger issue for Nucor over the years because of the company's growth and the evolution of Nucor's product mix. Nucor entered the flat-rolled business in 1987 with the sheet mill in Crawfordsville, Indiana and over the years has added capacity, most recently with the 2002 acquisition and re-start of a sheet mill in Decatur, Alabama. With four sheet mills, Nucor is the nation's largest mini mill producer of sheet.
HIsmelt Project
The HIsmelt project in western Australia is a joint venture with the Rio Tinto Group, Mitsubishi Corporation and Chinese steelmaker Shougang Corporation that converts iron ore fines and coal fines to liquid metal. The technology eliminates the need for coke ovens and pellet plants, which allows the HIsmelt process to have a more favorable environmental impact than traditional iron-making technologies. Nucor is a 25% owner in the venture.
The initial agreement was announced in April 2002. In 2004, the plant's operating team began training and preparation for the commissioning of equipment, and production started in the fourth quarter with annual capacity of 800,000 metric tons. The HIsmelt process is both a blast furnace replacement technology and a hot metal source for electric arc furnaces.
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