The company, whose roots in the state go back to 1806, makes steel and aluminum parts to spec and then supplies them to other manufacturers.
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American Steel and Aluminum LLC, a Maine company that supplies and processes metal to customer specifications, plans to expand its plate cutting and shot blasting capacity into a 50,920-square-foot industrial building on 11.43 acres at 75 Spring Hill Road in Saco.
American Steel bought the property from CJT Enterprises LLC for $4.25 million. The deal was brokered by Tom Dunham and Greg Hastings from the Dunham Group.
The building went up in 2000 and was renovated in 2008. It was formerly occupied by Casco Bay Steel Structures.
American Steel will use the facility for inventory storage and to increase its heavy-plate cutting capacity, said Sam Blatchford, the company’s president.
“We have a 40,000-square-foot facility in Lewiston which is a lease so we’ll exit at the end of 2025 or sooner, if someone wants to rent it,” he says.
American Steel is a subsidiary of privately owned Nova Steel Group, a Quebec-based processor and distributor with plants in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
The company processes steel, aluminum and other metals, from U.S. and Canadian mills, to customer specs, then distributes the processed materials to manufacturers throughout Maine and the Northeast.
Metal arrives via rail and truck as sheets, plates, tubes, bars, beams and other shapes. American Steel stores nearly 4,000 different stock-keeping units of metal, from 50-foot-long beams to quarter-inch-wide “keystock” steel used in gears and couplings.
Maine-based customers include Bath Iron Works in Bath, Hussey Seating Co. in North Berwick and Rockland manufacturer Fisher Engineering, owned by Milwaukee, Wisc.-based Douglas Dynamics.
The company uses the latest computerized technology, including laser, plasma and oxy cutting to fulfill custom orders for sheet, plate, tube and bar requirements. Additional services including grinding, deburring, bending, machining and kitting. ASA South Portland recently earned a globally recognized standard for quality management called ISO 9001-2015.
American Steel was established in 1806 by Francis Edmonds as Swedes Iron, on Portland’s Long Wharf.
Soon Swedes Iron was also carrying steel and in 1869 incorporated as E. Corey & Co., after the name of Edmonds’ partner. At one time Portland’s oldest existing business, the company remained on the waterfront until it merged with American Steel and moved in the 1960s to its current location at 115 Wallace Ave. in South Portland, which has expanded its footprint through the years.
Today, South Portland is an 80,000-square-foot facility and is the only full-service metals distributor in Maine.
In addition to a 40,000-square-foot leased storage facility in Lewiston, the company recently built a rail-served 52,000-square-foot facility in West Bath to exclusively support Bath Iron Works.
American Steel also operates facilities in Auburn, Mass.; Fremont, N.H.; and Liverpool, N.Y.
Its 105,000-square-foot Auburn, Mass., plant services General Dynamics Electric Boat as part of the submarine industrial base with a laser punch, forming, blasting, welding and powder coat equipment services.
The Fremont, N.H., flame-cutting division offers oxy and plasma plate cutting and drilling services.
Liverpool, N.Y.’s 55,000-square-foot facility serves a diverse group of customers in upstate New York with distribution, laser cutting, plate processing, robotic welding and other value-added services.
The Lewiston location has strictly provided inventory storage for Bath Iron Works’ materials, such as beams, split-T sections and pipes, for just-in-time delivery.
American Steel will move Lewiston operations to the Saco location and also add about 30% more plate cutting and processing capacity for Groton, Conn.-based General Dynamics Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corp. that is the primary builder of submarines for the U.S. Navy. American Steel cuts and forms plates and other parts for the submarines.
The company bought a state-of-the-art piece of plate processing equipment for the Saco location. The combination plasma cutting, oxy cutting, milling and drilling machine, made by Kinetic, a New Zealand manufacturer with an office in the U.S., will handle up to 8-inch-thick plate and will be able to do bevels.
American Steel has about 190 employees across its divisions; half are in Maine.
“We started at 120 employees when I joined the company 11 years ago,” said Blatchford.
The building’ tenants in Saco have a leaseback on 14,000 square feet of the building until the end of January. American Steel began upgrades in the rest of the building in early November, including cleaning, fresh paint, HVAC installations and some grading. The property purchase and upgrades were cash-financed.
The company expects to be operational in Saco by the end of January.
