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Individual Thin-Sheet Processing
for External Customers – SCHÜTZ Opens New Steel Service Centre
Top location in Siershahn offers state-of-the-art services
Selters / Siershahn. When Schütz GmbH & Co. KGaA officially takes its new Steel Service Centre (SSC) into operation on 21 November 2008 in Siershahn, Westerwald, a development will come full circle that has been in progress for decades and over which the company has also made a name for itself as a steel processor. Just a few kilometres from its headquarters in Selters, SCHÜTZ has acquired some 90,000 square metres of production space on the more than 100-year-old industrial site formerly occupied by Keramchemie (KCH Berggarten) and built a modern, high-performance competence centre there for the processing of various grades of flat-rolled steel. It is from here that the orders of our external customers will in future be processed.
Ever since the company was first founded, steel has been of tremendous significance to SCHÜTZ. After all, the company began its international development (main focus: transport packaging) in 1958, initially with the production of fuel oil tanks and then also with steel drums, which still form part of the portfolio.
At its site in Selters, SCHÜTZ invests its continuously growing know-how in the in-house production of all of its steel components. The range spans elements for the production of steel drums to pallet feet, and bot-tom plates and steel cages for the successful ECOBULK line (Intermediate Bulk Containers, IBCs). It is from there that SCHÜTZ ships these components to a host of international sites.
Enjoying a processing capacity of several hundred thousand tons of flat-rolled steel, the Steel Service Centre on the new SCHÜTZ site is one of the largest and most advanced plants of its kind in Europe. The area boasts some 5,000 square metres and has its own railway sidings for the delivery of up to 35 tons of heavy steel coils direct to the further processing unit.
Until recently, all our know-how and output was devoted exclusively to providing for in-house needs. In-deed, only in the past three years has SCHÜTZ begun to offer the additional service of professional further processing of steel for external clients. Services include the delivery of anything from whole coils to cut sections: plate bars and split strips.
SCHÜTZ today produces as many as several ten thousand tons of steel products a year for its external clients. Our relocation of contract production was the necessary consequence both of ever-increasing de-mand and of the need to ensure an adequate supply of parts for our own requirements on a reliable and lasting basis.
It would have been hard to find a more suitable site for the new Steel Service Centre than that in Siershahn. This has less to do with its direct proximity with the company headquarters than with the logistical advanta-ges the site offers. In addition to its own railway siding for delivery and shipment purposes, there is excel-lent access to the nearby A3 motorway.
SCHÜTZ has installed the most advanced technologies on a production area of nearly 7,000m2 to ensure maximum precision and efficiency in order to satisfy the individual needs and requirements of our custo-mers.
Here, SCHÜTZ operates a two-shift system in which split strips are produced with absolute precision, ir-respective of the desired feedstock and with the aid of a modern splitting unit – in a single step and up to the smallest possible widths, with clean cutting edges and impeccable quality.
After all, DIN EN ISO 9001 : 2001 certification and SCHÜTZ’s own test laboratory together guarantee a reliable and consistently high standard of quality in all processes – from individual consulting to targeted material stocking, readiness to deliver to just-in-time delivery, and customised packaging or the desired mode transport.
On opening day, incidentally, the railway siding at the new SSC in Siershahn will also benefit the 300 or so expected guests in a special way. They will first be welcomed at the SCHÜTZ headquarters in Selters and invited to a tour of the works – which will naturally spotlight the steel processing aspect of production. Fol-lowing this, a historical steam train belonging to the railway enthusiasts’ society Eisenbahnfreunde Betzdorf will await guests at the company’s own station and then take them to the new Steel Service Centre in Siers-hahn. There, a brief ceremony conducted by managing partner Udo Schütz and CEO Roland Straßburger, along with representatives from the political, administrative and business landscape, will conclude the official opening of the new site – lunch and a programme of supporting events will also be provided. At the end of the proceedings, guests will make a second traditional train journey back to Selters.
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