PROVIDENCE – The NanoSteel Co. and development partner AK Steel Corp. won the Platts Global Metals “Breakthrough Solution of the Year” award recently.
The award, announced recently in London, honors top performers for business achievement and impact on the industry. It recognized NanoSteel’s advanced automotive sheet, produced by AK Steel, which combines both high strength and high formability for automotive lightweighting.
“The company is honored to have our advanced sheet selected as Platt’s Breakthrough Solution of the Year,” NanoSteel President and CEO David Paratore said in a statement. “We believe this product brings optimal properties to automotive engineers for reducing structural weight without compromising safety and ride-quality requirements. Our material also provides all the benefits of steel, making it more cost-effective than alternative metals and easier to integrate into a supply chain and parts manufacturing footprint that has successfully produced steel automotive components for more than 100 years.”
According to NanoSteel, the award recognizes the product’s groundbreaking properties. The strength properties enable the design of parts with thinner gauges that reduce weight and the formability properties enable component designs with unique geometries for increased stiffness. Its elongation also allows automakers to use existing manufacturing infrastructure without additional capital investment and operator re-training.
Said Roger Newport, CEO of AK Steel, “As the first steel producer to develop the process to manufacture this unique product, we appreciate this recognition from Platts. This multiyear partnership between two innovative companies is uniquely positioned to advance steel’s leadership in vehicle lightweighting.”
Founded as a spinoff of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory in 2002, NanoSteel is a privately held company funded by lead investors EnerTech, Fairhaven Capital and GM Ventures.
