After three consecutive quarters of net losses, German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG returned to profit in the first quarter of the company’s 2009-10 fiscal year. ThyssenKrupp’s net income was UDS 265.5 million. While both orders and sales were down year over year, order intakes showed a notable upswing from the previous quarter, moving from USD 10.23 million of orders to USD 12.7 million, an increase of more than 24%. In a conference call discussing the earnings, Chief Financial Officer Alan Hippe touched on the start-up of ThyssenKrupp’s Steel Americas mills, comprising mills in Brazil and Alabama, US. First sales contracts have been signed by Steel Americas. The first orders were placed for products from the company’s grassroot hot strip mill in Mobile, Alabama, construction of which began in late 2007. Production at the mill is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of this year. Production at the facility will be ramped up as steel demand, which has been extremely low in the midst of the global economic slowdown, begins increasing. The mill will eventually process slabs produced at the company’s new steel slab mill in Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. However, production at the Brazil facility is not expected to start until early in the third-quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the Mobile facility will process steel slabs shipped from ThyssenKrupp’s mill in Duisburg, Germany.