U.S. Steel Plans 25-Day Blast Furnace Outage in May

The maintenance is to apply shotcrete–a sprayed concrete–and other standard upkeep, sources said.

Smaller outages are planned ahead of the the 25-day stoppage, probably beginning around March 21, they said.

Most recently, furnace No. 1 had a minor outage in 2020, while furnace No. 3 underwent a major relining during the spring of 2019. The No. 3 blast furnace will be the sole furnace running during the 25-day outage on No. 1 at the Braddock plant, SMU’s source said.

Mon Valley Works is comprised primarily of a coke manufacturing facility in Clairton, Pa., steelmaking operations and slab casting operations in Braddock, Pa., and a rolling mill in West Mifflin, Pa. It also includes a coating operation in Fairless Hills, Pa., near Philadelphia.

The Braddock facility, also known as the Edgar Thomson Plant, has blast furnace capacity of 2.09 million tons per year, according to the Association for Iron and Steel Technology’s 2021 Directory of Iron and Steel Plants. The No. 1 furnace’s annual capacity is 1.09 million tons, and No. 3’s is 1 million tons per year.

By David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com