Outokumpu’s Board of Directors has approved two investments. A new SS service centre in Southern Poland near Katowice will be a combination of a Coil Service Center with slitting and cut-to-length lines, together with a Plate Service Center with plasma and water jet cutting. The selected site near Katowice is connected to the region with optimal road and rail connection. The Service Center will serve Poland and other countries in the region like Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary and will challenge new potential markets in Eastern Europe. The total investment is some EUR 20 million and the Service Center is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2008. The other investment is for surface grinding and automatic storage and retrieval equipment in the Thin Strip Nyby works in Sweden. The equipment will be housed in a new building, and will expand Nyby’s share of special grades sales at the expense of standard grade products. The EUR 27 million investment will allow the plant to double its stainless steel special grades capacity of cold rolled products from 34,000 to 64,000tns annually, to take advantage of the fast growing special grades market. The full capacity will be released by the end of 2008. Following this, a further investment is planned to add finishing annealing equipment to bring the total special grades capacity of Thin Strip Nyby to 70,000tns annually by mid-2010.