PDCA STEEL MEMBER – STEEL PROJECT
Assisting the Growing Automotive Industry
with a New Galvanized Sheet Plant
TBy Janet Himstead he automotive industry in Mexico is growing at a rapid
pace. The production of automobiles in Mexico is
expected to increase from 3.4 million to 5.3 million by
the year 2020. Five hundred miles south of the United States border,
in the Silao region of Mexico, there are many different automobile
manufacturers, including General Motors, Volkswagen,
BMW, Toyota, Honda and Mazda. To be able to tap into this
growing market, a new joint venture was formed between Nucor
and JFE Steel.
Nucor is the largest steel manufacturer in the United States and
is primarily located in the United States and Canada. They produce
carbon and alloy steel, which is made into bars, beams, sheet and
plate; steel piling; steel joists and joist girders; steel deck; fabricated
concrete reinforcing steel; cold finished steel; steel fasteners; metal
building systems; steel grating; and wire and wire mesh.
JFE Steel Corporation is one of the world’s leading integrated
steel producers, operating several steel mills in Japan, as well as
technical research centers dedicated to the development and
application of the most advanced steelmaking technologies in
the world.
This 50-50 joint venture will build and operate a plant in central
Mexico to supply that country’s automotive market.
Continental Construction Company, Inc. from Memphis, Tenn.,
was contracted to drive the piles for the deep foundation of this
new facility. Nucor approached Continental in 2017 for the initial
stage of this project, a test-pile program. Then, in December of that
same year, the production piles began to be put into the ground.
The design capacity of the piles was 135 tons in compression and
60 tons in tension, using HP 14x73 piles with a 70 feet embedment
depth. This was one of the first jobs in this region to use steel piles
instead of concrete.
The initial order of HP 14x73, fulfilled by Skyline Comercial de
Mexico, was for 1,008 pieces. The remaining 2,800 H-piles were
supplied directly by Nucor to Continental. The production pile
project required mobilization of two crawler cranes and six pile
hammers from the United States and three crawler cranes from
Mexico. Even with a site as large as the Nucor-JFE site, having five
driving rigs at a time created the need for increased coordination,
not only from a safety perspective, but also from a production
standpoint. It was imperative to keep all the driving rigs adequately
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