Steel Dynamics Butler Flat Roll Division
Large load · 4500 CO RD 59, Butler, IN
Steel Dynamics' Butler Flat Roll Division, at 4500 County Road 59 near Butler in DeKalb County, Indiana, is the company's original mini mill. It melts scrap with pig iron and hot-briquetted iron in an electric arc furnace, casts thin slabs, and rolls them on a seven-stand hot mill. On-site cold mills, galvanizing and a paint line finish much of the output. Annual capacity is over 3 million tons. A flat-roll EAF campus of this size is one of the largest single electric loads in northeast Indiana, but no source available here gives its MW demand, serving utility or contract terms.
Overview
Phase I, sized for 1.2 million tons a year, went from groundbreaking to production in 13 months, and hot-rolled output began early in 1996. A cold mill followed in late 1997, and a 1998 expansion lifted capacity to 2.2 million tons. Steel Dynamics added a coil-coating line in 2003, reached 3 million tons a year in 2009, and added a leveling line in 2013 and a push-pull pickle line in 2016.
Profile
- Steelmaking process
- Scrap is blended with pig iron, hot-briquetted iron and other metals to each customer's chemistry and melted at about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit in an electric arc furnace. The steel then runs through a thin-slab caster and a tunnel furnace into the seven-stand hot mill. The EAF and the hot mill are the site's main electric loads.
- Finishing
- Some hot band ships straight to customers. Much of it goes to the on-site cold mill complex for pickling, cold rolling, tempering, annealing and galvanizing, or to a paint line that can coat 300,000 tons a year. Butler also feeds Steel Dynamics' Jeffersonville, Indiana finishing plant, which galvanizes 300,000 to 350,000 tons of Butler cold-rolled steel a year.
Facility
- Activity
- Electric arc furnace flat-rolled steel: thin-slab cast hot band, pickled, cold-rolled, galvanized and painted sheet
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Site type
- Facility
- Operating status
- Operating
Related records
Timeline
- Jan 1, 1996
- Hot-rolled production begins at the greenfield Butler mini mill
About Us | SDI Butler
- Jan 1, 2009
- Annual capacity reaches 3 million tons
About Us | SDI Butler