US Steel to take October outage at Mon Valley

Integrated steelmaker US Steel in October will take a scheduled blast furnace outage at its Mon Valley Works mill in Pennsylvania.

The 21 day maintenance outage will impact Mon Valley's 1.4mn short tons (st)/yr No. 3 blast furnace and could take at least 81,000st of hot metal production off the market.

The blast furnace is one of two at the mill. The 1.5mn st/yr No. 1 blast furnace underwent a 25 day outage in May 2021.

The late-year outage will come as other mills ramp up production. Electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker Steel Dynamics (SDI) expects its new 3mn st/yr flat rolled mill in Sinton, Texas, will ramp to 80pc capacity by the end of the third quarter, or 6,600st/day, and to hit 90pc capacity by the end of the year, which would equal 7,400st/day of production.

EAF steelmaker Nucor is expecting the 1.4mn st/yr expansion at its 1.6mn st/yr Gallatin, Kentucky, flat-rolled mill to be fully operational in the third quarter, adding an additional 3,800st/day of production capacity.

In April 2021, US Steel canceled its plans to invest $1bn in new endless casting and rolling facilities at the Mon Valley mill. The company has decided to invest $3bn to build a 3mn st/yr flat rolled electric arc furnace (EAF) steel mill in Arkansas adjacent to its 3.3mn st/yr Big River Steel EAF mill. The company will also spend $60mn to build a pig iron caster at its Gary Works steel mill in Indiana to supply metallics to Big River Steel.

By Rye Druzin