ArcelorMittal’s plant in Trevoux (Rhone-Alpes, France) will install two innovative production tools to produce customised heat exchangers for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry.

This new activity adds to the current welding and machining offer at the site which is part of SoluStil, the leader in sheet metalwork and a subsidiary of ArcelorMittal. The EUR 450,000 investment will help expand and strengthen the plant’s activities by supplying added value solutions to its customers.

The Trevoux plant will be equipped with a roller forming tubes from steel plates and a 3,200 mm wide welding rail (tube welding), giving the plant the ability to produce the internal tubes used in heat exchangers. Until now, the Trévoux plant had to buy tubes from specialists and then weld other elements from the exchanger (tube plates and accessories) using a robot. Now, products will be assembled from plates that are directly supplied by the ArcelorMittal group.

Producing its own tubes gives the plant an important competitive advantage, since it will be able to adapt the tubes in terms of dimensions and steel quality to meet customers’ requirements. The new welding machine which welds in one step instead of two, will reduce the production process time by 40%.

With these new machines, the site will be able to support the growth of Carrier, the world’s leader in air conditioning in particular by providing a full range of solutions to meet their needs.

Mr Frederic Mann plant director of Trevoux said that “This investment, which is critical for the steel sheet market, further strengthens our plant’s activities. Thanks to the investment, we are evolving from being a metal parts supplier to a solutions provider. The Trevoux site will now become a specialist in producing and assembling heat exchangers to meet our customers’ needs, thanks to the innovative production processes now in place.”