This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Business & Tech

RG Steel Names General Manager to Lead Sparrows Point

The "L" blast furnace is scheduled for restart in early May at the Sparrows Point mill.

Two steel industry operations veterans have joined RG Steel, including a new vice president and general manager at Sparrows Point.

RG Steel LLC has named Glenn G. Mikaloff, a U.S. Steel and AK Steel veteran executive with 37 years of steel industry experience, as vice president and general manager of steel operations at Sparrows Point.

Bette Kovach, spokeswoman for RG Steel, told Patch that Mikaloff has been on the job at the Point “since early April.” She also confirmed that RG has tabbed another well-known U.S. Steel veteran, Thomas Cera, as vice president and GM at the company’s two other major plants in Warren, OH and Wheeling, WV.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

Most recently, Mikaloff had been serving as chief operating officer of Warren Steel Holdings in Ohio, where he led the restart of steelmaking and casting operations for the company.

At the Point, he reports to John Goodwin, president and chief executive of RG Steel, now headquartered in Maryland.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

Mikaloff has more than 37 years of steel industry experience in operations management. He began his career at U.S. Steel South Works near Chicago, where he became division manager of the electric furnaces. He then moved to U.S. Steel’s Gary Works at Gary, IN, becoming plant manager of primary operations.

Mikaloff then left the country’s largest steelmaker and joined AK Steel, advancing through a series of positions there, which included responsibility in research, quality, engineering and operations support capacities at both its Middletown, OH plant as well as AK’s corporate headquarters.

Mikaloff holds a bachelor of science degree in materials science and metallurgical engineering from Purdue University.

Cera also is a former U.S. Steel executive with 30 years in operations management. He joined the former International Steel Group (ISG) as vice president of plate operations in 2003 and later moved to Mittal Steel as manager of hot roll and finishing operations at Indiana Harbor.

Cera also served as chief operating officer for Severstal North America and most recently had been chief operating officer for Court Holdings Ltd.

Meanwhile, RG Steel announced it is moving ahead with its previously announced plans to restart its L-blast furnace and resume primary operations at the Point early in May, good news for the beleaguered plant that's suffered through four devastating ownership changes over the past decade.

Following the former Bethlehem Steel Corp.’s bankruptcy filing, the Point was sold to ISG, headed by investor Wilbur Ross. Then, in quick order, it was sold to Mittal Steel in 2005, then later merged into Arcelor-Mittal before Russian giant Severstal acquired it in 2008.

Restarting the L-blast furnace, the third-largest in North America, will be followed closely by resumption of operations at the hot strip mill, which has been idled since last July due to low demand.

“The past nine months have been difficult for our employees, customers and suppliers,” Goodwin said in a statement Tuesday. “We are pleased to restart these facilities to recall our people and to produce high-quality steel valued by our customers.”

The company has been recalling workers for skill refresher training and to perform needed maintenance essential to a successful restart.

The skill refresher training sessions are being funded in part through a grant from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

“We thank Gov. O’Malley and the state of Maryland for their strong support as we work to restore Sparrows Point to full operation and bring back our employees who had been on layoff,” Goodwin said.

RG Steel’s annual steelmaking capacity is estimated at 7.5 million tons with facilities capable of turning out about 3.4 million tons of hot-rolled sheet, 660,000 tons of cold-rolled sheet and 650,00 tons of galvanized steel. It’s the nation’s fourth-largest flat-rolled steelmaker.

The company’s controller, Timothy Rogers, told a Rotary Club meeting in Wheeling on Tuesday that the firm is on the mend, despite heavy layoffs in recent years at its Yorkville and Martins Ferry, OH facilities.

“When RG Steel took control of the former Severstal in March, it put the local steel business back in American hands,” Rogers told Rotary members sitting in a darkened room due to an unexpected power outage, according to a report in Wheeling Intelligencer.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Essex-Middle River