US Steel restarts Granite City furnace

US Steel restarted the "B" furnace last week at its Granite City Works integrated steelmaking plant in Granite City, Illinois.

The Granite City facility produces flat-rolled steel for the energy, automotive and construction industries and has an annual crude steelmaking capacity of 2.8mn st. The hot-strip mill at the facility was restarted in February 2017 after being idled a year earlier.

The mill's blast furnaces were idled December 2015 in response to challenging market conditions for US steel producers. The Pittsburgh-based company said in March that it would restart the 1.2mn-1.5mn st/yr blast furnace "B" following US President Donald Trump's announcement of a 25pc tariff on imported steel.

US Steel also plans to restart the smaller "A" blast furnace at Granite City on or around 1 October, adding more than 1mn st/yr of capacity.

The Granite City plant began purchasing modest volumes of ferrous scrap over the last month ahead of the "B" furnace restart to supplement supply already on-hand, according to scrap market participants. Suppliers expect the mill to increase its scrap buy over the coming months as it consumes existing inventories.

The restart was further supported by strong demand for hot-rolled coil (HRC) that has pushed capacity utilization for US HRC producers in 2018 up to as much as 90pc or more.

US HRC prices have reached $900/st in June, rising by more than $200/st in 2018, on strong demand and as the US tariff on steel imports limited foreign supply.