U.S. Steel to Restart Idled Blast Furnace at Gary Works

Maintenance and a flooding incident have forced U.S. Steel to juggle producton on the furnaces at its Gary Works mill. Two of the three furnaces that had to be taken offline when a water pipe burst Nov. 27 are now back in operation. Blast furnaces #14 and #6 are now fully operational and #4 is expected to be back up and running by early next week, said U.S. Steel spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski. None of the furnaces were damaged by the flooding.

The #4 furnace is scheduled for planned maintenance in early 2020 and, in preparation for the outage, U.S. Steel has commenced start-up of Gary Works’ idled blast furnace #8. Blast furnace #8, with a 3,300-ton daily capacity, will support production while BF #4, at 4,200-tons capacity, is down for repairs. The start-up process for BF #8 began in early November and the furnace is expected to be operational next week.