NKY steel mill sheds more workers in latest round of layoffs

A Wilder steel mill that serves the energy industry is facing its third round of layoffs just this year.

TMK Ipsco is set to lay off 6 workers next month, including a project engineer, an industrial engineer and a cost analyst, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices filed with the Kentucky Career Center this week. The job cuts are expected to be permanent.

In January, officials at the steel mill announced plans to lay off 126 employees, although the job cuts were not permanent. Company officials were unavailable for comment about the new layoffs, although they’ve said previously that declining crude oil exploration and increasing foreign imports of steel are debilitating the business.

Last year, TMK Ipsco’s workforce of 320 workers faced layoffs in July. Again, these layoffs were not permanent

The company, with annual revenues of $1.7 billion in 2014, produces high-frequency electric resistant welding (ERW) process steel pipes used in oil and gas extraction and transmission at the sprawling Wilder mill alongside the Licking River.

Company and union officials blame the layoffs on the recent drop-off in the profits of the oil and gas industry, as well as trade agreements that allow the import of cheaper ERW steel from China and South Korea.

TMK Ipsco is the American division of Russia's TMK. It was formed June 2008 when TMK purchased 10 pipe-manufacturing facilities from SSAB, a Swedish steel company that had acquired Chicago-based Ipsco in 2007.

Much of TMK Ipsco's current production capacity comes from the company's 2006 acquisition of Newport-based NS Group Inc., a producer of seamless and welded pipe. The acquisition brought together welded pipe manufacturing and finishing operations in Wilder, as the Newport plant was closed.

In 2014, the company announced plans to expand the Wilder facility with a $19.8 million development designed to be the company's first steel coating facility. The state of Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority agreed to give the company $650,000 in tax credits over 10 years. Yet the project, which would have added 40 jobs, was put on hold when crude oil prices wobbled downward.

In fact, shortly after the expansion was announced, TMK cut hours at Wilder and two other U.S. mills by 30 percent.