- Tata Steel’s new hot-rolled Valast® 450 is significantly more abrasion-resistant than structural steels

- Valast® is an advanced abrasion-resistant steel developed for the construction, agricultural, mining, refuse and recycling industries

SOUTH BEND, Ind., Feb. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Tata Steel is introducing a new high-strength, abrasion-resistant steel in North America in partnership with Steel Warehouse.

Ideally suited for use on heavy equipment used in the mining, agriculture, construction, refuse and recycling industries, Tata’s new hot-rolled Valast® 450 offers vehicle manufacturers a variety of advantages compared to conventional abrasion-resistant plate-steel products.

Gordon AuBuchon, Steel Warehouse’s executive vice president for product development, points out that Valast rolled-steel will be offered in lighter gauges and tighter tolerances than plate, allowing for lightweighting and cost savings.

A low-alloy steel suitable for welding, Valast also will be available in widths of up to 81 inches, nearly 30 percent more than the maximum of 60 inches offered by many of Tata’s strip-steel competitors. Steel Warehouse also plans to introduce autogeneous laser welding at its production facilities to provide Valast in custom widths and lengths not available anywhere else in the world.

“Valast provides our customers with an opportunity to reduce waste and improve efficiency,” notes Glyn Martin, a technical support engineer at Tata Steel. “Because it’s a strip-steel product, Valast can be cut to any length needed with the added benefit of having the greatest width available in the industry.”

Tata Steel is one of the world’s largest steel producers with 75,000 employees across five continents. Based in South Bend, Indiana, Steel Warehouse is a leading U.S. supplier of steel-coil products with 12 locations in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil.

Hot-rolled at Tata Steel’s recently expanded IJmuiden production facilities in the Netherlands, Valast is especially suited for applications where strength and hardness are required. Dump and refuse trucks, mining and highway-construction vehicles, backhoes and other earth-moving equipment, for example, all rely on abrasion-resistant steel or components heat-treated for abrasion resistance.

“Abrasion-resistant steels are subject to some of the toughest working environments imaginable,” AuBuchon explains. “Valast 450 provides our customers with the strength and durability of an abrasion-resistant steel, while at the same time providing them with the quality, inventory management and high-level of technical support they’ve come to expect from Steel Warehouse and our partners at Tata Steel.”

Steel Warehouse processes abrasion-resistant steel from Tata for use on mining, construction and other heavy equipment on production lines that provide custom lengths and exceptional surface quality.

In the United States, Steel Warehouse has facilities in Calvert, Alabama; Osceola, Arkansas; Rock Island, Illinois; Portage and South Bend, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee; Houston, Texas, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company also has facilities in Monterrey, Mexico, and Paulinia, Brazil.

“We’ve had an excellent partnership with Steel Warehouse for more than 50 years and are very much looking forward to launching Valast 450 with them in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil this year,” says Tata’s Martin. “Similar launches are taking place in the U.K., Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The response to date has been outstanding.”

Steel Warehouse is a leading producer of premier steel-coil products based in South Bend, Indiana. Founded in 1947, the family-owned business today has annual sales of more than one billion dollars with 2,100 employees at locations in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. The company provides distribution, shipping and processing capabilities for high-carbon, stainless and low-carbon steel products to customers in a wide variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, agriculture, construction, defense and mining. More information about Steel Warehouse is available at www.steelwarehouse.com.

The Tata Steel group is one of the world’s largest steel producers with 75,000 employees across five continents and a production capacity of more than 28 million tons. The company supplies high-quality steel products to some of the world’s most demanding markets, including construction, automotive, packaging, excavating, energy and aerospace. Tata Steel also works closely with its customers to develop new steel products that provide a competitive edge. More information is available at www.tatasteeleurope.com.