Steel Mills

JSW Steel USA Recalls Workers for Planned Restart in March

Written by Michael Cowden

January 5, 2021

JSW Steel USA has begun to recall workers at its idled sheet mill in Mingo Junction, Ohio, as well as at its idled plate and pipe mills in Baytown, Texas, the company’s top executive said.

“We still intend to start up both facilities in March,” JSW Steel USA CEO Mark Bush told Steel Market Update in an email on Monday.

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

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is managing editor for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He has since 2014 specialized in flat-rolled steel but has previously reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube as well as aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago - where he was involved in launching AMM's daily hot-rolled coil index, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.

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