Integrated steelmaker US Steel plans to idle its steelmaking operations at its Great Lakes Works in Michigan.

The Pittsburgh-based company today said the remaining online blast furnace at Great Lakes, with a capacity of 1.4mn short tons (st)/yr, and other iron and steelmaking facilities there will start to be idled by 1 April, 2020.

The hot strip mill will be idled by the end of 2020.

US Steel said the facility has averaged 3.4mn st/yr of pellet consumption over the last five years to produce an average of 2.4mn st/yr of steel.

The 1.34mn st/yr B2 blast furnace at the Great Lakes mill had been idled in July due to market conditions as hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices declined in 2019.

The Argus weekly domestic US HRC index fell from $740/st at the beginning of the year to a low of $488/st on 22 October, a 34pc decline. HRC prices have since recovered by 21pc to $590/st for the week ending 17 December.

US Steel's pickling line, cold mill, sheet temper mill, continuous galvanizing line, and annealing processes at Great Lakes will remain open as demand warrants.

The idling is the latest for the company, which idled a Minnesota iron ore pellet plant in October and two US blast furnaces in July, one at Great Lakes Works and the other at its Gary Works in Indiana. Those two idled blast furnaces, the B2 at Great Lakes and No 8 at Gary Works, had a combined production capacity of 2.52mn st/yr.

US Steel has brought the No 8 blast furnace at Gary Works back online temporarily in order to cover lost production from Gary Works' No 4 blast furnace, which is expected to go down for 48 days in April for planned maintenance.

In November integrated steelmaker ArcelorMittal shut down a 4,960st/day blast furnace at its Indiana Harbor mill near Chicago.

By Rye Druzin