Nucor to suspend production ahead of hurricane

US steelmaker Nucor will suspend operations at its Berkeley, South Carolina, sheet mill and Hertford, North Carolina, plate mill as Hurricane Florence barrels toward the US east coast.

A spokesperson for the Charlotte-based company told Argus today that the mills will have an "orderly suspension of operations" beginning Wednesday as the storm passes. Operations are expected to resume when it is determined that it is safe to do so, Nucor said.

Florence is expected to make landfall in the Carolinas on Thursday as an "extremely dangerous major hurricane," according to the National Hurricane Center.

Berkeley, located near Charleston, is Nucor's largest sheet mill with a production capacity of more than 3mn st/yr. Hertford has a capacity of nearly 1mn st/yr of plate.

Additional Nucor locations may be impacted by evacuation orders, including at the company's scrap brokerage and processing subsidiary David J Joseph.

Still, Nucor does not expect the suspension to impact customer orders.

Other producers in the key steelmaking region had yet to announce a decision on operations as of Tuesday afternoon.

Brazil-based long products producer Gerdau, which operates mills and scrap processing facilities in North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey, said it would make a decision on the operating status of its facilities when it has a clearer sense of the timing and path of the storm.

Dallas-based Commercial Metals operates rebar mills and scrap processing facilities in North and South Carolina, while Liberty Steel operates a wire rod mill outside of Charleston in Georgetown, South Carolina.

Indiana-based Steel Dynamics also operates a bar mill in Virginia in addition to scrap processing facilities in the state through its Omnisource subsidiary.

US ports along the southern Atlantic coast expect to close for vessel movement tomorrow in anticipation of Florence.

The ports of Wilmington and Charleston in the Carolinas and the ports of Savannah and Brunswick in Georgia are expected to enter port condition Zulu at 9:00am EST tomorrow, a shipping agency said today. If and when condition Zulu goes into effect, vessel operations will be halted with exceptions granted only on a case by case basis by the captain of the port.

All four ports are currently under port condition X-ray, set by the US Coast Guard this morning, which means that vessel traffic and transfer operations may continue for now, but all ships over 500 gross tons should make plans for departing the port.

Sustained winds between 39 and 54 mph are possible at the ports within the next 48 hours, said the Coast Guard.

The South Carolina governor issued a mandatory evacuation order for the state's coastal residents effective noon EST today, while parts of North Carolina and Virginia were also under evacuation orders.

Florence potential path as of 2pm AST 11 Sep