US Steel is planning four maintenance outages at its furnace facilities in Q4 2021. A spokesperson for the company noted that the maintenance outages were necessary to ensure the reliability and integrity of the company’s assets in the long term. The lower volumes produced in the market at a time with long lead times and strong demand are expected to support the flat steel prices in the quarter, which are running historically high. HRC is presently at $2,072-2,116 ($1,880-1,920/nt) FOB Midwest mill, up $1,080-1,058/mt, or more than double, against mid-December 2020 prices.
Outage schedule
The 1.36mn nt (1.23mn mt)annual capacity blast furnace No 6 in Gary, Indiana will have a 38-40 day outage beginning Sep 30 this year. The No 6 furnace was restarted in early July 2020 after being idled in late April 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns.
The 2.8mn nt annual capacity blast furnace No 14 also in Gary will be shut down on Nov 30 for approximately 10 days.
The blast furnace B in Granite City, Illinois will go down for maintenance for about 7 days beginning Oct 1. The Granite City’s two furnaces have an annual capacity of about 2.8mn nt and approximately 1.4mn nt in each.
The Big River Steel’s CSP, pickling line and tandem cold mill (PLTCM), and universal annealing and hot-dip galvanizing line (CGL) in Arkansas are going down for maintenance for about 13 days beginning Oct 10.