Finnish Company Expands in New Castle

Outokumpu, based in Espoo, Finland, has upgraded its North American quarto plate facility in New Castle. The investment of more than €45 million will allow the mill to improve production efficiencies to better compete in the global stainless steel market.

The Indiana mill is the only Outokumpu location in North America producing specialised stainless steel plate recognized for its high resistance to corrosion.

Outokumpu is the market leader in stainless steel quarto plate with a global market share of some 20%. Thick and wide individually rolled quarto plates are used in the energy sector, in extracting salt from seawater and transporting chemicals and are widely employed in the process industries for manufacturing pressure cylinders, tanks, thick-walled tubes, bridge structures and process equipment.

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New Castle Native is Ambassador to Thailand

Yesterday (29 March) The Indianapolis Star published a Q&A with Eric G. John, a native of New Castle who has served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand since 2007.

The item was, inexplicably, in the entertainment section of the newspaper.

KVK Koetke GmbH Comes to New Castle

A German company is opening a plant in New Castle because the weak value of the American dollar lowers the cost of the investment, according to a report by the Indianapolis Business Journal. Founder Claus-Dieter Koetke told The Star-Press of Muncie that he located the facility in the eastern Indiana city because the person who will be president of the facility, Chad McClung, lives in nearby Connersville. The $3 million project by KVK Koetke GmbH will be located in an existing building and will employ 25 workers by 2010. The plant will pay workers $18 an hour. KVK Koetke GmbH produces customer-oriented hollow parts for technical parts of the automobile industry, heating technology, medical technology as well as for the packaging industry and other branches of the thermoplastic resins industry.