Long steelmaker Gerdau will restart melting and rolling operations at its Arkansas special steel operations tomorrow, less than a week after it shuttered the melt shop due to coronavirus-related shutdowns in the US auto industry.
The 606,000 short ton (st)/yr electric arc furnace (EAF) mill in Fort Smith, located in western Arkansas on the border with Oklahoma, has an equivalent rolling capacity and produces special bars, shapes and cold finished bars.
The Arkansas mill had been idled along with two mills in Michigan due to widespread automobile manufacturing shutdowns announced last week by automakers in the US.
Gerdau said it was monitoring the situation regarding coronavirus when considering whether to reopen its other two idled mills, which are located near Detroit in Jackson and Monroe, Michigan.
The earliest possible restart for automakers are by Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and General Motors (GM), who could restart plants as early as next week. Ford recently announced a plan to restart a plant in Mexico on a limited shift on 6 April, while restarting some of its US plants on 14 April.
The Michigan mills have a melting capacity of 992,000 st/yr and a rolling capacity of 1.1mn st/yr.
The restart comes as integrated steelmaker US Steel said today it would be idling two blast furnaces, tap $800mn in financing and curtail its 2020 spending by $125mn. ArcelorMittal earlier this week announced it would idle two blast furnaces, one each in Canada and the US.
