LONDON — Nanshan America Co., a subsidiary of China’s Nanshan Group Co. Ltd., has delayed the installation and start-up of two extrusion presses in Lafayette, Ind.

The first press was initially set to come online by August and the second by December (amm.com, Feb. 10), but the company delayed the start-up after facing issues with the foundations for equipment, project director Jamie Beardsley told AMM.

The first press, a 12-inch, will now begin production in January; the second, which will extrude large-diameter shapes, will begin production in April, he said.

"This is all new equipment that’s custom built, and it’s very large. It requires unique or individual foundations to support it. So we had to make sure we had the right foundations in place to support the loads," Beardsley said.

Assessing the foundations and "gathering the technical information" pushed back the equipment installation, he added.

"This is not something you want to put together and then take out a few years later," Beardsley said. "We did slip on the schedule of the first press installation (but) being in our industry and knowing the fourth quarter will be slow, we didn’t feel like there would be a lot of commercial loss."

The two presses will have a nameplate capacity of 80 million pounds per year and will supply a variety of end-markets, including distribution, transportation and general industrial, among others.