Steel Products
U.S. Steel Idles Gary Works BF #8
Written by Sandy Williams
April 13, 2020
U.S. Steel will idle furnace #8 at Gary Works due to low market demand. The furnace was restarted in late 2019 to supplement production during a scheduled maintenance outage for the #4 furnace in 2020.
The #8 furnace has been banked in order to quickly restore production should market conditions improve.
“We are not in a position to speculate about the length of the idling,” said U.S. Steel spokeswoman Meghan Cox. “There are no immediate impacts to employees, but we will continue to evaluate in line with future conditions.”
In March, U.S. Steel idled BF #4 at Gary Works and the BF A at Granite City Works. The blast furnace idles were part of aggressive actions taken by U.S. Steel to mitigate the impacts from the coronavirus and weak market conditions. Actions included delays to certain projects, idling of iron and steelmaking at Great Lakes Works, and the idling of tubular operations at Lone Star Tubular and Lorain.
According to steel analyst Philip Gibbs of KeyBank, U.S. Steel will have approximately 50 percent of their 17 million tons of flat rolled steel capacity idled with the banking of the #8 furnace at Gary Works.
Sandy Williams
Read more from Sandy WilliamsLatest in Steel Products
AISI: US steel shipments slip in September
Domestic steel shipments decreased both on-year and month over month in September.
Northwest Pipe’s Q3 profits soar, sees strong end to ’24
Northwest Pipe’s third-quarter earnings jumped over 76% on-year as the company expects a strong finish to 2024.
CRU: What will the US elections mean for climate policy?
SMU is pleased to share this Insight piece from CRU economists. You can visit the CRU website to learn about its global commodities research and analysis services. The US presidential election will take place this Tuesday, Nov. 5, with opinion polls indicating a tight race between the two main contenders, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, […]
‘Unprecedented stability’ in prices rules galvanized mart
The theme of “unprecedented stability” in pricing predominated among galvanized steel buyers this month.
CRU aluminum news roundup
A roundup of this week's CRU aluminum news.