JSW Steel USA Recalls Workers for Planned Restart in March

JSW Steel USA idled its Mingo Junction and Baytown mills in 2020 in response to poor market demand. It also took the downtime to make upgrades to the Ohio mill’s electric-arc furnace (EAF) and caster.

The idling of Mingo Junction contributed to a severe spot market squeeze in the second half of 2020, a period that saw steel prices soar from less than $25/cwt ($500 per ton) to more than $50/cwt ($1,000 a ton). A restart of the facility could help to ease that squeeze.

The Mingo Junction mill’s EAF has annual capacity of 1.5 million tons per year, according to the Association for Iron and Steel Technology’s 2020 directory of iron and steel plants. It also sports a ladle metallurgy furnace (LMF), a slab caster and an 80-inch hot-strip mill, according to the company’s website.

The Baytown mill does not have an EAF and so relies on its sister mill in Ohio or on imported slabs for substrate to roll into plate and pipe.

Industry sources have told Steel Market Update that JSW is bringing in imported slab from southern Ohio to Mingo Junction, which might allow it to restart the HSM ahead of the EAF. Bush did not comment on that issue.

By Michael Cowden, michael@steelmarketupdate.com