Steel mills produce a variety of products. The basic starting (semifinished) shapes are slabs, billets, and blooms. Formerly made from ingots, these semifinished shapes are now mostly continuous cast. Slabs are used to produce flat products such as plate, sheet and strip, and skelp, much of which is coated in tin mills, galvanizing mills, or other coating processes. Flat products, once the exclusive domain of integrated mills, are now being cast produced by minimills with thin-slab casting technology. Billets are rolled to form bar, rod, wire, seamless pipe, and small structural shapes. Also called long products or commodity products, these are now the exclusive domain of the minimill. Large structural shapes for heavy construction or rails are rolled from blooms. Increasingly large and complex minimills have recently taken the majority of this market away from the integrated mills.

Slab Products

Billet Products

Bloom Products

Steel Processing Flow Lines, American Iron and Steel Institute, Washington, D.C.