Timken Increasing Capacity Across Steel Plants

CANTON, Ohio, April 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Timken Company (NYSE: TKR) will increase its annual steelmaking capacity by 120,000 tons across its steel manufacturing facilities in Canton, Ohio. The company is achieving this boost through a series of improvements at its Harrison Steel Plant that build upon and further leverage the $60 million rolling-mill investment completed there in 2008.  

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Over the last two years, continuous improvement efforts at the Harrison plant allowed the company to achieve record output well beyond the new mill's original design. Additional investments and crew additions being made over the next few months will enable a further increase in output and will allow the company to optimize production loads between its Harrison and Faircrest plants. The changes will effectively create new capacity at both of these steel facilities to support growing demand for finished bar products and billets for tubing product which serve customers in the global industrial; oil and gas; and mobile markets.

"We are expanding our capacity to better serve customers who need high performance steel," said Sal Miraglia, president of Timken's steel business. "We understand that it takes a nimble company to ramp up for economic recovery and also adjust production to serve our customers' most critical, demanding application requirements.  These changes will give us greater flexibility in our processes, support our efforts to improve delivery performance, and provide much-needed capacity to serve growing sectors of the global marketplace."

Miraglia said the plant will reach the full volume planned within six to 12 months, depending on testing, product mix, specifications and other customer requirements.

Competitive Investments in Timken Steel Operations

"We are investing additional resources to increase throughput and improve customer service in very constrained market conditions," said Miraglia, who noted that this latest round of improvements to increase capacity follows a series of more than $200 million in advanced technology investments the company has made at its Canton, Ohio-based steel operations since 2006. In February, Timken announced it would invest $35 million to install a high-volume, in-line forge press at its Faircrest rolling mill that will be one of a kind in the United States. Last year, the company announced $50 million in capital improvements to its Harrison and Gambrinus steel plants. Previous investments include two new heat-treat lines and a scrap logistics system added between 2006 and 2007; the acquisition and expansion of Boring Specialties and the addition of a long-length tube line in 2008; as well as a small bar mill commissioned at the Harrison facility later that year in collaboration with Daido Steel.

About The Timken Company

The Timken Company (NYSE: TKR; www.timken.com) keeps the world turning with innovative friction management and power transmission products and services that are critical to help hard-working machinery to perform more efficiently and reliably. With sales of $4.1 billion in 2010 and operations in 28 countries with approximately 20,000 people, Timken is Where You Turn® for better performance.

Contacts - Media: Lorrie Paul Crum, Ofc: 330.471.3514; Mob: 330.224.5021. lorrie.crum@timken.com; Investors: Steve Tschiegg, Ofc: 330.471.7446. steve.tschiegg@timken.com, The Timken Company.

SOURCE The Timken Company