Sparrows Point

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Coordinates: 39 ° 13 '6.3 "  N , 76 ° 29" 14.4 "  W.

Sparrows Point Steel Mill from the air (2007?)
Sparrows Point Steel Mill from the seaside (1973)
Bethlehem Shipbuilding welders building a Liberty ship (1943)

Sparrows Point is a peninsula in the southeast of Baltimore , which for 120 years housed an important industrial complex with a steel mill , zinc smelter and shipyard .

history

In 1887 the Pennsylvania Steel Company acquired the site and built a blast furnace , which was blown for the first time in October 1889. In 1916 the company was acquired by Bethlehem Steel . Starting in 1891, the Maryland Steel Company also built ships at Sparrows Point. Since 1916 the shipyard belonged to the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation .

In 1957 the Sparrows Point steelworks achieved an annual output of 8 million tons of steel , which was a world record at the time. In 1959 the peak was reached with 30,000 employees.

In 1974 the workers' estate was demolished to make way for the new blast furnace L , which was completed in 1978. In 1979 the number of employees was still 17,000. The shipyard was sold in 1997 and went bankrupt in 2003.

After Bethlehem Steel was broken up, the steelworks belonged to ArcelorMittal , which sold it to Severstal in 2008 for anti-trust reasons . The annual production capacity at that time was 3.6 million tons of steel.

In 2011 RG Steel , a subsidiary of the Renco Group , took over the economically ailing steelworks. A year later, however, the company filed for bankruptcy . Most recently, 2,200 people were employed there. According to Mark Reutter, the owner's lack of strategy and obsolescence made it impossible to survive. The hot rolling mill was built in 1947.

The steel mill was closed and largely demolished by 2015. In 2014 the site was acquired by Hilco Global and Redwood Capital Investments ( Jim Davis and Steve Bisciotti ) for US $ 110 million . It now bears the name “Tradepoint Atlantic” and is to be used with warehouses ( FedEx , Under Armor ). The quays were rented to a car import company.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b The History of Sparrows Point: An Epic Civilization by Bill Barry , 2014
  2. ↑ a b shipbuildinghistory.com: Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point MD ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.shipbuildinghistory.com
  3. ↑ a b Jamie Smith Hopkins: Sparrows Point: A year after collapse, unsettled lives . In: The Baltimore Sun . ( baltimoresun.com ).
  4. ↑ Robin Paxton: Russia's Severstal buys Sparrows Point mill . In: Reuters . March 21, 2012 ( reuters.com ).
  5. ↑ Christine Hansen: RG Steel Acquires Sparrows Point Steel Mill . In: MDBIZNews . March 2, 2011 ( maryland.gov ).
  6. ↑ Mark Reutter: Six reasons why the Sparrows Point steel mill collapsed. Baltimore Brew, May 25, 2012, accessed October 21, 2016 .
  7. ^ Pamela Wood: Another distribution center in the works for Tradepoint Atlantic . In: Baltimore Sun . July 18, 2016 ( baltimoresun.com ).
  8. ^ The Story. In: tradepointatlantic.com. Retrieved October 21, 2016 .