Final Thoughts
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US Steel Košice Idles Second Blast Furnace
Written by Laura Miller
December 6, 2022
US Steel has idled a second blast furnace at its Košice steelworks in Slovakia.
The No. 1 BF at Košice has been temporarily idled as of Dec. 2 “as a result of very high energy prices, low market demand and surging imports,” a US Steel spokeswoman confirmed to SMU in an email Tuesday, Dec. 6.
In September, the company pulled forward a 60-day planned outage on the No. 2 Košice BF. That furnace has remained down, awaiting an improvement in customer activity.
“We expect to resume two BF operations at the beginning of 2023,” the spokeswoman added.
A third BF at the carbon flat-rolled, electrical steel, and spiral-weld pipe mill remains in operation.
In its third quarter earnings conference call in late October, executives of the Pittsburgh-based steelmaker commented on the challenging environment it has been facing in Europe. President and CEO David Burritt said on the call the company would continue to adjust to manage the headwinds of high raw material and energy costs, buyer destocking, and the continuing war in neighboring Ukraine.
By Laura Miller, Laura@SteelMarketUpdate.com
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Laura Miller
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Final thoughts
SMU has heard from some larger buyers who have stepped back into the market to buy at prices that, if not at a bottom, they assess to be close to one. Is it enough to stretch out lead times and send prices upward again? Or do we continue to scrape along the mid-$600s per short ton (st) as we have been doing for most of the last month?
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Final thoughts
Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves had some insightful things to say today about the steel market and about a conference we suspect might be Steel Summit.
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Final thoughts
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you add in some commentary from respected peers in the steel industry to those pictures, that may shoot you up to five thousand words, at least. In that spirit, we’ve added some snapshots from our market survey this week, along with some comments from market participants.
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Final thoughts
I thought we’d have more clarity this week on Section 232, Mexico, and a potential carve-out for steel melted and poured in Brazil. As of right now, the only official comment I have is from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
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Final thoughts
There are just 40 days left until the 2024 SMU Steel Summit gets underway on Aug. 26 at the Georgia International Convention Center (GICC) in Atlanta. And I’m pleased to announce that it's official now: More than 1,000 people have registered to at attend! Another big development: The desktop version of the networking app for the event has officially launched!