Gerdau Ontario steel mill shutting for 6 weeks

Long steel products maker Gerdau will stop melt shop production at its 1.05 short ton/yr Whitby, Ontario, mill starting in late April.

The company said it will boost the electric arc furnace (EAF) mill's production capacity and quality during the outage.

Whitby produces long products like angles, channels, flats, reinforcing bar (rebar) and structural products.

Other Gerdau mills will cover the lost Whitby production to avoid customer disruptions, the company said.

Preceding the melt shop work, the mill's rolling operations will go off line for two weeks of maintenance. The mill has 661,000 st/yr of structural rolling capacity and 551,000 st/yr of bar rolling capacity, according to data from the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST)

By Rye Druzin