MIDLAND — A Nebraska-based company specializing in protective steel coatings is putting down roots in Beaver County with a new hot-dip galvanizing facility.
Valmont Coatings recently launched its first Pittsburgh-area galvanizing plant at a former J&L Steel factory along 12th Street in Midland after years of market exploration. Valmont first purchased the 11-acre site in early 2019, facing COVID-19 related setbacks during construction and ultimately opening in April 2021.
Leadership began exploring the regional market as early as 2015, said Kevin Halstead, Valmont’s vice president of North American galvanizing operations, finally settling on Midland due to its proximity to Interstate 376 and the Ohio River, as well as its mass of skilled labor and the Beaver County building’s “good bones.”
“It was an old steel building, so it had a lot of height, which a galvanizing plant always needs,” said Halstead. “It’s close enough to highways, interstates … and Pittsburgh, overall, has gone through a lot of transformation – from being the old steel to what it is today – but there’s a lot of fabrication in the Pittsburgh area. It was a good fit.”
Although Valmont has no plans to expand further into western Pennsylvania in the near future, Halstead said leadership is considering growing the Midland factory's capacity. About 40 people currently work at the site.
In essence, plant employees clean a variety of fabricated steel products and dip them in molten zinc to protect the steel from corrosion.
After undergoing structural enhancements, the revamped plant was fitted with a large galvanizing kettle containing molten zinc, lifting equipment with load capacities of up to 40,000 pounds and processing capabilities for materials up to 90 feet long.
“We’ve got 11 process tanks installed there, each is 58 feet long and the kettle is about the same size,” Halstead said. “We’ve got about 1.3 million - 1.4 million pounds of molten zinc on site.”
Jennifer Kros-Dorfmeyer, Valmont’s marketing director of brand strategy, said among the company’s core principals are “conserving resources and improving life,” a foundation that’s reflected inside Midland’s new plant, she said.
Valmont boasts its efforts to operate sustainably, including equipping the plant’s enclosed kettle with a device for fume collection and filtration, installing an LED movement-based lighting system and using a proprietary pickling solution designed to replace hydrochloric and sulfuric acid to remove iron oxides in hot-dip galvanizing. By recycling and reusing zinc, Valmont also reduces its environmental footprint, Halstead said.