ArcelorMittal Mediterranean announced it would restart blast furnace (BF) #1 at its Fos-sur-Mer steelworks in France, according to the company’s chief executive officer Bruno Ribo.
The company announced on July 30 it would restart BF#1 in September before reversing this decision on September 10 in response to weak steel market fundamentals. More recently, however, ArcelorMittal decided to restart one blast furnace module, which has been idled since March 23 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on steel demand.
In an interview with local media on September 10, Ribo commented that BF#1 will resume production in the week of September 21 “in a decidedly very uncertain economic context.”
According to ArcelorMittal, the Fos-sur-Mer facility produced more than 3.84mn mt of crude steel in the full year of 2019 compared with a slated operational capacity of 4.6mn mt per annum. The plant can produce up to 5mn mt of flat steel.
The Fos-sur-Mer facility consists of: a discharging/loading quay, a sinter plant, a coke plant, two blast furnaces, two basic oxygen converters, two continuous casters, an in-ladle metallurgy treatment installation, a hot strip mill, and finishing lines, according to the company’s website.