Prime scrap use for flat steel falls: SDI

Electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker Steel Dynamics' (SDI) use of prime scrap in its melts has fallen significantly, the company's chief executive said today at a conference.

SDI continues to work to reduce its prime scrap consumption as a way to cut its costs, chief executive Mark Millett said, brushing off concerns from other steelmakers that there could be a looming raw material shortage.

SDI's Butler and Columbus plants "used to run 60-65pc prime scrap (and we have) taken that down to 30-34pc," Millet told an audience at the Global Steel Dynamics Forum in New York. "I don't think there's going to be a shortage of scrap."

Millett said his company has used technology to reduce the copper and nickel content in its shredded scrap supply to improve it and use it to replace traditional prime scrap, which he said would be in short supply in the future. Prime scrap is generated by manufacturing activity like stamping, cutting or punching steel coils and is generally considered the cleanest and highest priced steel scrap. Mills then recycled that unadulterated scrap back to produce new steel.

Millett also said his company will become "self sufficient in pig iron in the next two to four years," pointing to the biocarbon joint venture SDI formed with biocarbon energy producer Aymium to build a facility that could produce more than 160,000 metric tonnes (t)/yr of biocarbon to reduce fossil fuel-based carbon sources used in SDI's steelmaking processes.

By Rye Druzin