Steel Summit: USS' Kopf sees 2026 as a 'good opportunity'

“Now being on the other side, I go into it with an appreciation of what it’s like to be in the shoes of those folks (Nippon),” he said at Steel Summit 2025 in a Fireside Chat with SMU Editor-in-Chief Michael Cowden.

Hive of activity

As in the Steel Summit remarks of USS President and CEO David Burritt, Kopf said that since the closing of the deal in June, there has been a frenzy of activity.

“Right after the June 18 closing, we had a whole bunch of people from Japan come over, and basically the whole month of July, they were here trying to just get their feet wet,” Kopf said.

He stressed that one thing that was not going to change following the partnership was USS’ “customer-centric mentality.”

He pointed to Nippon Chairman and CEO Eiji Hashimoto’s commercial background, which would be a boon to that vision.

Kopf said Hashimoto “has a pretty good focus on what it takes to serve customers, and he’s trying to put us in position to make sure that we do an even better job.”

Meeting customers’ needs

Speaking of customers, in today’s economic environment, especially with the ever-changing tariff landscape, Kopf thinks USS’ diversified footprint is a definite asset.

“The good news is that we are well-positioned with our integration back to the (iron ore) mines (in Minnesota),” Kopf said. “Our footprint has flexibility in it to be able to utilize the cost of making steel in different ways.”

That could be through pellets into a blast furnace or using scrap and pig iron, or direct-reduced iron (DRI) into EAFs, he said.

“We have the ability to start flexing our production across our footprint to give our customers options,” Kopf noted, and that includes green steel options.

“We’re very busy migrating and trialing new automotive trials down to Big River steel, for example,” he added.

Whether a customer wants a blast furnace or EAF product, since the acquisition of Big River Steel in Osceola, Ark., Kopf underscored: “I think we now have the ability to offer solutions that our customers need.”

One blast furnace project Kopf mentioned was the relining of the No. 14 BF at Gary Works next year. “It’s the largest blast furnace in our network,” Kopf said. He noted the outage would be approximately 100 days in 2026, but didn’t give any further timeline.

Outlook

Kopf made a concerted effort during his talk not to use the word “uncertainty,” as it was such a major theme of the conference.

However, he did point to a “lack of clarity, maybe, moving forward.” That said, he called 2026 “a good opportunity.”

“When we look at the portfolio business that we have, we’re really excited about it. It’s diverse,” he commented.

Kopf said USS supplies steel to automotive, home appliances, packaging, energy markets, solar, service centers, and construction, among others.

If there is upcoming clarity on Federal Reserve interest rates and the tariff situation, Kopf said, “I think that makes for a good position moving forward for all of our facilities.”