When the sunshine glimmers on the hood of a freshly made car, the hands that cut and formed the steel to build it are seldom known.
But with a brand new flag and certification to process steel for the automotive industry, the Mississippi Steel Processing plant at 400 N. Steel Road plans to change that.
MSP Vice President and General Manager Mark Reynolds told The Dispatch the company received a new certification from the International Automotive Task Force, an international organization designed to test and approve processing facilities for automotive steel. To celebrate the new certification, Reynolds and a group of more than 60 employees gathered to raise the navy blue flag — donning a car and the IATF logo — Wednesday afternoon.
“It is a new opportunity for MSP to add to its portfolio of customers and business and products that we supply here,” Reynolds said. “We just had the opportunity to grow and add to what we currently have in-house.”
With the new certification, MSP will begin looking for automotive customers for whom it will process steel. Once those are found, the company will take 70-to-80-inch steel coils from Steel Dynamics Inc. and split them into smaller cylinders per the customer’s specification.
Reynolds said that those new coils will be shipped to stampers who turn the coiled steel into stronger, lighter vehicle parts.
“Any time you change your opportunity, it brings opportunity,” Reynolds said. “Any time you change your focus and your direction of what you’re processing and what you’re supplying, it gives an opportunity to improve.”
MSP came to its location in Lowndes County in 2010. Four years later, it underwent its first of two expansions to add a rail spur to receive steel coils from SDI and completed a second expansion in 2019 with a new building that increased its steel processing capabilities.
MSP currently processes 18,000 to 22,000 tons of steel a month into slits and smaller coils for SDI, roofing, HVAC and dock plate leveler companies, operating at 65 percent of its total capacity.
With room for growth, Reynolds said the company is also working to process for other steel-based entities like Altex Tube Inc., which broke ground on the SDI campus in July.
Altex President and CEO Zach Smith said MSP was one of the key factors in deciding where to build the company’s steel tubing facility, which is poised to begin operations in July 2023, and is satisfied to see MSP expand its capability in steel processing.
“Locating there was the fact that everything is right there within walking distance,” Smith said. “The freight savings on inbound freight, it will be a huge advantage for us.”
Golden Triangle Development LINK Chief Executive Officer Joe Max Higgins said MSP’s ability to process even more steel from SDI and haul it to automotive companies does more than just increase the bottom line, it puts the automotive steel industry right in its backyard, which serves to develop further the economic capabilities of the entire campus and its businesses.
“Them going into automotive is a big deal because you’re going to make more money making products in the automotive arena than for somebody else,” Higgins said. “Our Mississippi hands make the steel down at the steel mill, and our Mississippi hands get to touch it once again and make it into a slit roll. So that’s value added.”
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