Steel giant ArcelorMittal has plans to restart blast furnace no. 2 at its plant in Foss-sur-Mer, France in April 2023. The company suspended operations at the blast furnace in December amid high electricity costs, large volumes of steel imports into the country and sluggish demand and prices.
Meanwhile, prices of steel coils have recovered since December, but mills have extended deadlines for carrying out repair works due to which producers are now offering products for May deliveries.
Furthermore, the company expects steel demand from the automotive sector to improve in the coming months. As a result, it is bringing back most of the idled capacities into operation.
Operations were resumed at the European plants amid growing apparent demand for steel and around 10% of the blast furnaces were idle in the begining of CY23 compared with 20% in Q4CY22.
Production was started at blast furnace no. 3 at the Dombrova-Hurnych steel plant in Poland and two furnaces were started in Dunkirk, France, while all the company’s steel plants are operational in Germany but with reduced capacity. The blast furnace in Asturias in Spain is operating at approximately 70% capacity.
In CY22, ArcelorMittal’s Europe division witnessed 13.3% y-o-y decline in steel production at 31.9 mnt and steel shipments were down 9% on the year to 30.18 mnt.
~GMK Center
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