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Reichard Industries Hosts Johnson for Plant Tour
COLUMBIANA, Ohio -- On the south side of this city, Reichard Industries LLC makes the equipment that allows the domestic steel industry to make steel, items such as ladles (empty) that weigh anywhere from 10 to 350 tons, hot metal cars that weigh anywhere from 150 to 500 tons, blast furnace bells and hoppers, electric arc furnace shells, among others.
Reichard, with a skilled workforce of 60 at its plants here and in Niles, makes and repairs the equipment that steel companies of all sizes, mostly here but some abroad, use to produce steel, whether in a basic oxygen or electric arc furnace.
Having provided a constituent service earlier this year to Reichard – expediting the issuance of a road permit that allowed the company to ship a huge ladle to Eramet Marietta Inc. -- U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson paid a visit Tuesday to learn more about the company. As Johnson noted in his conversation with brothers Keith A. and Duane Reichard, Eramet Marietta is one of the few remaining manganese alloy-manufacturing plants in the United States and manganese is essential in the manufacture of steel.
Keith is president and CEO of Reichard Industries, Duane vice president. Both hold degrees in mechanical engineering at Youngstown State University with Keith earning an MBA at the University of Akron while Duane is working on his master’s degree in engineering and intends to go further and earn a doctorate in the discipline as well.
The tour of the two Reichard plants in Columbiana impressed Johnson and his two aides. Both the scope of the buildings – the building with the crane has is covered by a roof 77 feet from the ground – and the equipment the welders, assemblers and machinists were working on.
“I’ve visited steel mills before,” Johnson said afterward, “but I’ve never seen a facility like this.”
Space at the Fairfield plant is limited and making matters worse is a completed 60,000-pound AOD vessel taking up space as Reichard Industries works to secure a permit to transport it by road to AK Steel in Middletown. Securing permits to transport oversized new and repaired equipment seems a constant challenge.
Johnson saw welders working on a ladle with a diameter of 19 feet – it was on its side so its size could not help but impress – ladle transfer cars, and blast furnace bells and hoppers. Seeing close up the immense size of the equipment the men were working is more than enough to awe visitors.
Afterward Johnson pronounced bright futures for the steel industry and Reichard Industries. The best days of the domestic steel industry are yet to come, the congressman told the Reichard brothers, and they said their company will serve those companies as long as the United States continues to make steel.