Steel Mills
June 18, 2015
Blast Furnaces
Written by Brett Linton
Steel Market Update has been asked if the domestic steel mills have made any moves to restart idled blast furnaces in order to increase production due to dumping suits, price increases and the anticipated stronger order book. People also want to know if ArcelorMittal and US Steel are building slab inventories in order to have material available for their contract customers (especially automotive) should there be a production disruption due to the expiration of their labor agreements (September 1st – same day as the first day of our Steel Summit Conference in Atlanta).
We recently did an analysis of blast furnaces in the United States, Mexico and Canada to see what is running and what has returned to production. Essentially, both US Steel and ArcelorMittal have brought back a furnace over the past few weeks. AM brought back a blast furnace at their Cleveland Works and US Steel has/is bringing back their furnace at Fairfield Works in Alabama.
The process of finding out whether furnaces are running at any point in time can be difficult as US Steel and ArcelorMittal don’t always want to address those questions except on a quarterly basis during their conference calls with analysts. The data below is based on our recent research and there could be issues with one or two furnaces so we recommend that our readers check with your mill suppliers should you have any questions.
For those of you who do not realize this, Steel Market Update has a table in our website for our members where we attempt to keep up with the blast furnaces in North America. You must be logged into the website to access the data which looks something like this:
Blast Furnace Steel Mill Status
| Mill Name / Plant | Furnace I.D. | Daily Capacity (Net Tons) | Running? | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AK Steel | |||||
| Ashland | Amanda | 6000 | Yes | ||
| Middletown | No. 3 | 6500 | Yes | ||
| AK Dearborn | C Furnace | 6000 | Yes | ||
| AHMSA (Mexico) | |||||
| No. 4 | 2700 | No | Idle | ||
| No. 5 | 6500 | Yes | |||
| No. 6 | 4500 | Yes | |||
| ArcelorMittal | |||||
| Hamilton (Canada) | No. 2 | 3200 | Yes | ||
| No. 3 | 2500 | Yes | |||
| No. 4 | 4700 | Yes | |||
| Burns Harbor | C Furnace | 7400 | Yes | ||
| D Furnace | 7400 | Yes | |||
| Indiana Harbor | IH-3 W | 4300 | Yes | ||
| IH-4 W | 4900 | No | |||
| IH-5 E | 2900 | No | |||
| IH-6 E | 5000 | No | |||
| IH-7 E | 11500 | Yes | |||
| Cleveland | C-5 | 4350 | Yes | ||
| C-6 | 4150 | Yes | |||
| Essar Steel Algoma (Canada) | |||||
| No. 7 | 8400 | Yes | |||
| No. 6 | 3000 | No | Possible restart in 2015 | ||
| United States Steel | |||||
| Edgar Thomson Works | No. 1 | 3450 | Yes | ||
| No. 3 | 3100 | Yes | |||
| Fairfield | No. 8 | 6000 | Yes | ||
| Gary Works | No. 4 | 4200 | Yes | ||
| No. 6 | 3800 | No | Down for maintenance, will come back up depending on market conditions | ||
| No. 8 | 3300 | Yes | |||
| No. 14 | 9200 | Yes | |||
| Granite City | A Furnace | 3600 | Yes | One furnace is down to replace caster | |
| B Furnace | 3600 | Yes | |||
| Great Lakes (Ecorse, MI) | A-1 | 4100 | Yes* | *Only 2 of the 3 furnaces are running at any given time | |
| B-2 | 3700 | Yes* | |||
| D-4 | 4000 | Yes* | |||
| Hamilton (Canada) | E Furnace | 5500 | No | Shut down October 4 2010 & removed from active status | |
| Lake Erie (Canada) | No. 1 | 6575 | Yes | ||
