Steel Center Expands TWB Capacity in Japan and China

Steel Center, Japanese coil center and Honda Motor’s subsidiary, expands the processing capacity of tailored welded blank equipment (TWB) for strong demand for automobile. The firm increases to 2 TWB in Kawazato factory and increases to 2 TWB in Guangzhou Pearl Steel Center (GPSC) in China in October 2008. TWB is the technology to weld steel sheet with differing thickness and contributes weight saving of automobile.Kawazato factory introduced TWB for the response of automobile makers’ needs in 2005, and increases processing volume to about 60,000 sheets per month from 46,000 sheets by 2 TWB because users need increasing TWB’s processing. Kawazato factory can process at max 100,000 sheets. Steel Center expects to increase the processing volume by about 40% to 15,300 tonnes in Kawazato factory and Kameyama factory in fiscal 2007 at the ended of March 2008.GPSC will increase to 1.12 million sheets by about 3.6 times in fiscal 2008.