Market Segment
April 22, 2021
Written by Michael Cowden
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is running all eight of its active blast furnaces and has no plans to take significant downtime in the second quarter, the company’s top executive said.
“We do not have any major outages scheduled in Q2. We are focused on getting steel out the door,” Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said during a conference call with analysts on Thursday, April 22.
The current plate market squeeze has been driven by improved demand and heightened import barriers, including 50% Section 232 tariffs. But the timing of fall outages—even if they were planned—is exacerbating the supply crunch.
Metalformers’ optimism softened in the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) September Business Conditions Report.
SMU’s latest Flat-Rolled Steel Buyers Survey shows that in a tight US market marked by long lead times, low inventories, and rising prices, foreign products continue to gain the interest of domestic buyers.
Domestic raw steel output fell to a six-month low last week after hitting a multi-year high one week earlier, according to the latest American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) figures.
The proposed Hyundai-POSCO steel mill in Louisiana has been approved for up to $1.3 billion in bond financing, according to state records and local media reports.