Corus and Sumitomo Metal Industries (SMI) are claiming good progress in developing new strip steel products for the automotive industry and also in engineering steels under their technological collaboration agreement signed a year ago this month.
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Corus and SMI have brought together their complementary strengths in product development and process and applications technology, which include Corus’ know-how in galvanising and free-cutting steel and SMI’s galvanneal and high strength steels manufacturing technologies.
At the second meeting of their steering committee held in Tokyo in November 2002, the companies agreed to accelerate the development of new products and their delivery to the market, and to assist customers in implementing international material standards for new vehicle programmes.
In the automotive field, Corus and SMI have started plant trials to supply samples of hot-dip galvanised high strength strip steel to shared customers. Their initial target product will include dual phase high strength steels and new bake hardenable steel for the next vehicle programmes in Japan and Europe. They will also carry out the value assessment and development of next generation, high performance, strip steel for exposed panel and body structure application.
In the area of engineering steel, Corus and Sumitomo have already started a joint evaluation of candidate steels in order to replace the lead in low carbon free-cutting steels used in the automotive industry.
More generally, the steel companies will work together to improve quality and manufacturing technologies through process control – from steel-making to finishing of galvanised and galvanneal products for the automotive sector and the surface quality of engineering steel products.
They will also use their customer service and application experience to create better value in use for current and future vehicles and to apply technologies such as tailor welded blanking and finite element simulation.
SMI’s Hasaki Research Laboratory will be used jointly and the testing facilities of both companies’ technology centres will be used in the launch of new products.
