Market Segment

October 1, 2021
AHMSA Taking Two-Week Planned Outage on HSM
Written by Michael Cowden
Mexican flat-rolled steelmaker Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA) is taking a planned, two-week outage on its hot strip mill, a company spokesman said.
The outage is underway. Because it was planned, customers should not be impacted, he said.
AHMSA’s hot strip mill has annual capacity of 2.8 million tons per year, according to the Association for Iron and Steel Technology’s 2021 Directory of Iron and Steel Plants.
Separately AHMSA, which is based in the city of Monclova in the northern Mexican province of Coahuila, has not set a date to restart its No. 6 blast furnace, the spokesman said.
The No. 6 furnace, which has daily capacity of 4,500 tons, has been idled since January 2020, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table.
AHMSA is an important supplier to the domestic sheet and plate markets because northern Mexico shares a border with the U.S. Also, AHMSA – like other Mexican steelmakers as well as steelmakers in Canada – can ship to U.S. customers on lead times comparable to those of domestic mills.
By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

