Market Segment
June 18, 2015
Blast Furnaces
Written by Brett Linton
Steel Market Update has been asked if the domestic steel mills have made any moves to restart idled blast furnaces in order to increase production due to dumping suits, price increases and the anticipated stronger order book. People also want to know if ArcelorMittal and US Steel are building slab inventories in order to have material available for their contract customers (especially automotive) should there be a production disruption due to the expiration of their labor agreements (September 1st – same day as the first day of our Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta).
We recently did an analysis of blast furnaces in the United States, Mexico and Canada to see what is running and what has returned to production. Essentially, both US Steel and ArcelorMittal have brought back a furnace over the past few weeks. AM brought back a blast furnace at their Cleveland Works and US Steel has/is bringing back their furnace at Fairfield Works in Alabama.
