French crude steel production increased in October largely driven by the resumption of output from ArcelorMittal Europe’s blast furnace ironmaking facility in Dunkerque. According to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) data, French crude steel output increased by 10.5pc to 1.11mn mt in October compared with 1.06mn mt in the prior month.
However, local pig iron output will likely plateau over the next few months given that most blast furnaces are fully operational and steel demand has again been impacted by national lockdowns.
ArcelorMittal restarted one of its two idled blast furnaces (BF3) at the Dunkerque facility in late August to compensate for outages at its Ghent and Poland operations. As a result, French pig iron production edged up 4pc to 688,000mt in September from 662,000mt in the prior month.
French crude steel output has fallen 25.2pc to 9.29mn mt through the first 10 months of 2020 compared with 12.4mn mt during the same period last year.
Meanwhile, pig iron production declined by 27.8pc to 6.13mn mt in January-October 2020 compared with 8.49mn mt through the first 10 months in 2019.