The Dongkuk Steel Mill Company of South Korea and the Italian metals group Danieli are also helping to finance the construction of a $700 million steel slab plant in the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará.
A Brazilian mining company, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, and the German steel maker ThyssenKrupp Stahl signed an agreement to build a steel slab plant in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Doce said.
In addition, the bank recently signed a letter of intent to offer $110 million in financing for a separate steel slab plant further to the east in Ceará, where the state government is trying to woo foreign investors by guaranteeing natural gas supplies for the venture.
Arcelor, the world's biggest steel maker, and California Steel Industries together own 46percentt of California Steel Industries, C.S.N.'s main Brazilian rival, and Dongkuk of South Korea has joined with Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, a big mining company, and other investors to build a new steel slab plant in the northeast.
The tombstones — their name was spelled Mittleman on them — matched the army of white slabs planted in the sea of just-mowed lawn.
Designed by the Australian architectural firm of Denton Corker Marshall, it is meant to look as if it is partly sunk into the ground, with a roof of pewter-colored metal slabs planted with turf.
Slab works best for large pieces.
An Israeli sculptor, Dani Karavan, opened a hole in the center of a marble slab and planted an olive tree there.
In one of the untitled installations, set in the middle of the gallery's largest room, a crowded gathering of potted plants, slabs of wood, and concrete blocks is equally impenetrable.
The company says it would supply slab steel from its plant in Dunkirk, on the English Channel, for processing at Florange.
In the 1980s, the plant, a squat slab of industrial grey that stretches for kilometres throughout the city's west end with a bleak and brutal appearance that betrays the still in use post-war technology, had 12,000 employees.
