Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel was a steel manufacturer based in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Operations
The company owned the following factories, all of which are between Benwood, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio. Ackermann Works at Wheeling, which produced pressed and drawn steel stampings used in the automotive and appliance industries. Beech Bottom Works at Beech Bottom, West Virginia, which consisted of sheet mills for producing hot rolled electrical sheets used by electrical equipment manufacturers. It also had facilities for coating long terne sheets produced by the Yorkville Works. Benwood Works at Benwood, West Virginia, which consisted of 2 pipe mills with slabs supplied from Steubenville Works. LaBelle Works at Wheeling, which manufactured cut nails. Martins Ferry Works at Martins Ferry, Ohio, which produced galvanized sheets, galvanized roofing and accessories, corrugated culverts, and hand-dipped items. It featured two continuous galvanizing lines where coils of steel strips were processed, galvanized, and treated and sold under the SofTite brand. A second galvanizing line went into operation in November 1953 at a cost of $3 million. Steubenville Works, which consisted of three integrated operations: At the Steubenville North Works in Steubenville, Ohio, there were two blast furnaces, eleven open hearth furnaces, a blooming mill, a hot strip mill and cold reduction mills. The principal products of the North Works included hot-rolled sheets, plates, cold rolled sheets, and coils. The Steubenville South Works in Mingo Junction, Ohio, was connected to the North Works by a standard gauge railroad. There were three blast furnaces and two Bessemer converters in operation there along with a blooming mill and auxiliary equipment. The South Works supplied hot metal for the open hearths at the North Works and Bessemer slabs for the Benwood Works. The Steubenville East Works in Follansbee, West Virginia, was connected to the North Works by a railway bridge and produced coke and coke oven gas required for the manufacturing operations. It consisted of 314 coke ovens and those facilities also include a modern plant for the recovery of by-products from coke oven gas. Steelcrete Works, adjacent to Beech Bottom Works, manufactured expanded metal, metal lath, and accessories. It also produced Steelcrete bank vaults, reinforced mesh for buildings, stair treads, partitions, and miscellaneous items. Wheeling Works at Wheeling, which fabricated containers, stove pipe and furnace pipe, electric and gas dryers, roofing accessories, floor and roof decking, gasoline tanks for automobiles, and miscellaneous automobile parts. Yorkville Works at Yorkville, Ohio, which consisted of the first cold reduced black plate for tinning. The first tandem mill of its kind was installed in 1928. The facility produced electrolytic and hot-dipped tinplate, black plate, and terneplate. It also had a metal decorating plant for coating and lithographing tin, terne, and black plate, and two electrolytic tin plate lines that produced tin plate at up to 1,000 feet per minute. Wheeling Steel was acquired by Pittsburgh Steel to form the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation in December 1968. The merger added: Allenport Works, a sheet steel plant in Allenport, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Monessen Works, a steel mill in Monessen, Pennsylvania.
History
Wheeling Steel Corporation was organized on June 21, 1920. It consisted largely of the assets of Whitaker iron family and associated families in the Ohio valley and remained under their control for many years.
In 1968, Wheeling Steel merged with Pittsburgh Steel to become the 9th-largest steelmaker in the United States at the time.
The company was slow to modernize its high-cost facilities and accumulated excess debt following a series of modernization programs in the 1960s and 1970s. Combined with labor contract disagreements and a pension crisis in the 1980s, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1985.
In 1986, the company closed the Monessen rail mill that employed 200 people. That same year, Wheeling-Pitt opened a galvanizing plant for automotive sheet steel as a joint-venture with Nippon Steel in Follansbee, WV.
The company reduced its employee count from 8,500 in 1985 to 6,500 in 1990. In 1994, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel reorganized into a holding-company structure, where the newly formed WHX Corporation would become the parent company of Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel.
In 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy protection again after posting a major loss and increasing debt. In 2003, the company emerged from bankruptcy protection after a reorganization that would make it independent of the WHX Corporation.