United States Steel Corporation

United States Steel Corporation, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in North America and Central Europe and an annual raw steelmaking capability of 24.4 million net tons. The company manufactures a wide range of value-added steel sheet and tubular products for the automotive, appliance, container, industrial machinery, construction, and oil and gas industries. U. S. Steel’s integrated steel facilities include Gary Works, which is made up of Gary Works in Gary, Ind., East Chicago Tin in East Chicago, Ind., and Midwest Plant in Portage, Ind.; Great Lakes Works in Ecorse and River Rouge, Mich.; Mon Valley Works, which includes Edgar Thomson Plant and Irvin Plant near Pittsburgh, Pa., and Fairless Plant near Philadelphia, Pa.; Granite City Works in Granite City, Ill.; Fairfield Works in Fairfield, Ala.; and U. S. Steel Košice in the Slovak Republic.  U. S. Steel is also involved in several steel finishing joint ventures in the United States, Brazil and Mexico.U. S. Steel prides itself on being a leader in both process and product technology and has four research and development facilities dedicated to advancing the boundaries of steelmaking: the Research and Technology Center in Munhall, Pa.; the Automotive Center, a research and sales facility in Troy, Mich.; the U. S. Steel Tubular Products Innovation and Technology Center in Houston, Texas; and USSE Research in Košice.

U. S. Steel has tubular operations in Houston, Hughes Springs, and Lone Star, Texas;  Pine Bluff, Ark.; Fairfield, Ala.; and Lorain, Ohio. The company also maintains tubular products sales offices in Denver, Co., Dallas and Houston, Texas,  and Calgary, Alberta Canada.U. S. Steel produces coke at Mon Valley Works’ Clairton Plant near Pittsburgh and U. S. Steel Košice. The company operates two iron ore mines through its Minnesota Ore Operations on the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota: one in Mt. Iron (Minntac) and one in Keewatin (Keetac). Both mine an iron-bearing rock called taconite and process it into concentrated iron ore pellets, which are converted to liquid iron in the company’s blast furnaces.

U. S. Steel is also involved in railroad transportation services through its Transtar, Inc. subsidiary and real estate operations through its USS Real Estate division.Every day, U. S. Steel employees around the world dedicate themselves to putting the company’s five core values into action. Safety is first – it’s U. S. Steel’s top priority. The other core values are diversity and inclusion; environmental stewardship; focus on cost, quality and customer; and results and accountability. Focusing on these values guides the company’s highly skilled workforce toward realizing U. S. Steel’s Vision: Making Steel. World Competitive. Building Value.U. S. Steel’s operations are efficient and high tech, and the company’s customer focus is intense. U. S. Steel has been making steel for more than 110 years, always with an eye to serving customers’ needs in the most cost-effective ways possible.

Companies that want to be competitive in an increasingly global marketplace must have a global outlook and presence. U. S. Steel continually looks for opportunities to strengthen the company’s existing presence in the global arena and strives to meet and set world-class standards in everything it does.At U. S. Steel, creating value for the company’s stakeholders is a priority. To ensure the company’s long-term success, it aims to build value for customers, employees, shareholders, creditors, and the communities in which it operates using the same responsible approach that has positioned U. S. Steel as a leader in the global steel industry.

United States Steel Corporation’s world headquarters is located in the U. S. Steel Tower, which is situated along Grant St. in downtown Pittsburgh, Pa., and showcases the company’s COR-TEN® steel. When its construction was completed in 1971, the building was considered to be an engineering masterpiece and was featured in many architectural and engineering magazines. The 62-story tower, once the tallest building between New York and Chicago at 841 feet and 64 stories, is the tallest building in downtown Pittsburgh, which is situated at the confluence of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers.

When founded in 1901, United States Steel Corporation was the largest business enterprise ever launched, with an authorized capitalization of $1.4 billion. Throughout the years, U. S. Steel responded to changing economic conditions and new market opportunities through diversification and periodic restructuring. Today, over a century after its founding, U. S. Steel remains the largest integrated steel producer headquartered in the United States.

U. S. Steel had its origins in the dealings of some of America's most legendary businessmen, including Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Charles Schwab. However, its principal architect was Elbert H. Gary, who also became U. S. Steel's first chairman. At the turn of the century, a group headed by Gary and Morgan bought Carnegie's steel company and combined it with their holdings in the Federal Steel Company. These two companies became the nucleus of U. S. Steel, which also included American Steel & Wire Co., National Tube Company, American Tin Plate Co., American Steel Hoop Co., and American Sheet Steel Co. In its first full year of operation, U. S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States.

In the decades that followed, the corporation consolidated its various steelmaking and raw material subsidiaries and divisions through a series of reorganizations. Many of the corporation's divisions were related to or grew out of the company's original steel operations. Significant diversification and restructuring actions occurred in the 1980s, particularly in 1982, when the corporation became involved in the energy industry with its acquisition of Marathon Oil Company. In early 1986, the corporation expanded its energy business when it acquired Texas Oil & Gas Corp.In late 1986, recognizing the fact that it had become a vastly different corporation, United States Steel Corporation changed its name to USX Corporation, with principal operating units involved in energy, steel and diversified businesses.

The 1980s also brought significant changes to the corporation's steel operations. In response to economic changes in the steel industry, the corporation reduced its domestic raw steel production capability through a number of restructurings. In addition, the corporation entered into several steel joint ventures with both domestic and foreign partners.At the same time, many of the units among the corporation's diversified businesses were sold or combined into joint venture enterprises. These included chemicals and agri-chemicals businesses, an oil field supply business, domestic transportation subsidiaries and raw materials properties worldwide.

Turning to the financial structure of the corporation, in 1991, shareholders approved a proposal to change the capitalization of the corporation. A new class of common stock was issued, USX-U. S. Steel Group Common Stock (NYSE: X), to reflect the performance of the corporation's steel and diversified businesses. USX Corporation common stock was changed into USX-Marathon Group Common Stock (NYSE: MRO) to reflect the energy side of the business.In October 2001, USX Corporation shareholders voted to adopt a plan of reorganization. The plan resulted in the tax-free spin-off of the steel and steel-related businesses of USX into a freestanding, publicly traded company known as United States Steel Corporation – the name of the corporation when it was established a century earlier. The remaining energy businesses of USX became Marathon Oil Corporation.

The two new companies officially began operating independently on January 1, 2002.When the separation was finalized, U. S. Steel adopted a new Vision for its future – Making Steel. World Competitive. Building Value – that would help the company and its employees focus on areas that would be key to their success in the years ahead.But prior to its spin-off from USX, U. S. Steel recognized the need to diversify its geographic footprint, and on Nov. 24, 2000, U. S. Steel completed the purchase of the Slovak steelmaking operations and related assets of VSZ a.s. The operations were renamed U. S. Steel Košice after the eastern Slovak town in which the facilities were located. In March 2001, U. S. Steel closed on its acquisition of LTV Steel’s East Chicago, Ind., tin mill products finishing facility.

During this time, many U.S. steelmakers filed for bankruptcy protection, and their assets were purchased by other companies and investors who saw value in consolidating the domestic steel industry. U. S. Steel was active in this process, completing the purchase of certain steelmaking assets from bankruptcy-protected National Steel Corporation in May 2003. Later that year, U. S. Steel continued its expansion into Central Europe by purchasing bankrupt Serbian steelmaker Sartid a.d. and several of its subsidiaries and renaming the operations U. S. Steel Serbia.  In January 2012, U. S. Steel Serbia was sold to the Republic of Serbia due to the significant cost and commercial challenges faced by the operation. In 2007, U. S. Steel made two more value-building acquisitions. The first was the purchase of Dallas, Texas-based welded tubular products maker Lone Star Technologies, Inc. and its related companies in June. The deal made U. S. Steel the largest tubular goods producer in North America, with total annual capability of 2.8 million net tons.In October 2007, U. S. Steel increased its flat-rolled products capacity by acquiring Canada’s Stelco Inc., which it renamed U. S. Steel Canada. Today, U. S. Steel remains proud of its past, but is focused on its future. As a leader in the increasingly competitive global steel industry, United States Steel Corporation is dedicated to delivering high-quality products to our customers and building value for all of our stakeholders.

U. S. Steel’s Vision - Making Steel. World Competitive. Building Value. - is supported by a series of core values within the company. One of those core values is environmental stewardship. We recognize that the earth is a shared and finite resource that we all must safeguard for generations to come. It is our commitment to sustainability that drives our operations to adopt management systems and best practices that foster continuous improvement in our processes; preserving vital resources and ensuring the future of the industry.  We do this because U. S. Steel is more than a global leader in the steel industry; we are your friends, neighbors and community partners. U. S. Steel’s nearly 37,000 employees live and work in the same communities as you. We breathe the same air, drink the same water and share the same hopes and dreams for our families. As a company, U. S. Steel articulates its core value of environmental stewardship through four basic principles which are the responsibility of all of our employees and our operations. They are:

• Compliance with environmental laws and regulations
• Continuous improvement in environmental and resource management
• Continued reduction of emissions
• Community partnerships to protect and preserve natural resources

U. S. Steel has been an industry leader in environmental compliance, beginning with the full incorporation of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 environmental management systems. ISO 14001 standards seek to assist companies and organizations to “minimize harmful effects on the environment caused by its activities, and to achieve continual improvement of its environmental performance.” Today, all of U. S. Steel’s facilities have achieved and maintain ISO 14001 compliance.Additionally, U. S. Steel is working to help other industries comply with increasingly stringent environmental rules and regulations. The automotive industry, for example, is benefiting from partnering with the steel industry to investigate how the use of advanced high strength steels, like those produced by U. S. Steel, can help meet ever increasing fuel economy standards while enhancing a vehicle’s safety and engine performance.  U. S. Steel’s commitment to complying with our environmental standards and partnering with other industries to apply state-of-the-art technology to find new and innovative solutions to meet or exceed environmental standards is just part of how our company operates under this basic principle.

U. S. Steel has been committed to being a major supplier of quality sheet products. To demonstrate our continuing commitment, we have invested substantial amounts of money and effort to upgrade our sheet-producing facilities.  Sheet product information has been organized into distinct sections for hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and coated sheet products. The primary focus is product information, but also included is a considerable amount of processing information to enable you to better understand how each of these product types is manufactured. Aside from adding new and/or improved equipment, we have dedicated ourselves to continuous process improvement through our APEX (All People, All Process, All Product EXcellence) program. To improve our process and product quality on a continuing basis, the APEX system provides for continuous measurement of performance and continuous feedback from customers and vendors. At each plant, APEX has formal action plans that are continuously updated, to keep day-to-day processes in control, to reduce product variability, and to identify areas for quality improvement.

Tin mill products include electrolytic tinplate, electrolytic chromium coated steel (also referred to as tin free steel or TFS), tin coated steel, and black plate, an uncoated product. The majority of applications for tin mill products are used by the container industry in the manufacturing of cans, ends and closures for the food and beverage industry. More than 120 tinplate lines and 30 TFS lines are operating in the world today, supplying this huge market. Tin mill products are produced with certain standardized product characteristics, including terminology, composition, mechanical properties, surface finish, coating weights and the like. These characteristics are covered in detail in the ASTM Standard Specifications list under references. Contact us for more information on tin mill products and characteristics.Solid waste is becoming an increasingly serious problem as the number of landfills decreases without a concomitant decrease in waste generation. The number of solid waste landfills dropped from 8,000 in 1988 to 3,197 in 1995. Concurrently tipping fees have increased, often by an order of magnitude in just a few years. It is estimated that 35% of the solid waste mix is packaging of all types; metal cans are estimated to be less than 2% of solid waste by weight, whereas all metallic objects represent about 7% of solid waste.

U. S. Steel has provided solutions to the energy industry for well over a century – from supplying pipe for some of the earliest pipelines in the nation, to developing specialty steels and tools vital to today’s shale plays. We take pride that we introduced the first seamless drill pipe to the oil and gas industry before World War I. Many other innovations and inventions followed, and today we continue striving to anticipate and answer our energy customers’ needs.