Steel Mills

US Steel Restarting BF at Fairfield Works

June 4, 2015

A US Steel spokesperson reports that the Fairfield Works blast furnace is in the process of restarting.

Notices were given last week to employees and customers that a blast furnace at Granite City Works will continue in operation.

Analysts at Key Banc Capital Markets had the following comments on US Steel.

“Fairfield is being restarted to run down raw material inventories and to potentially support a recovery in apparent energy demand in late 2015-early 2016 – it appears that X is trying to get the EAF running (1.6M tons vs. 2.4M ton BF/BOF at present) as quickly as possible (i.e., ahead of 2Q16 launch schedule). 50% of Granite City’s capacity is being maintained, which will support jobs and production. We see the new caster supporting X’s automotive market transformation, as it seeks to make auto-quality material in-house – the recent purchase of DESCO will also assist.

“Union labor negotiations will begin in earnest at the beginning of July (and should end late August/September) with the focus on healthcare costs and to more closely tie compensation to company performance (i.e., flexibility).

“We see a bit more potential interest from the Company in producing pig iron to feed Fairfield or other future EAF facilities vs. DRI – we also believe this would involve more minimal investment cost.”

The Fairfield blast furnace, which is rated at 6,000 tons of pig iron production per day (steel production would be higher due to the addition of scrap in the BOF), was taken down earlier this year due to the lack of orders in the energy segment of their business.