ArcelorMittal begins temporary shutdowns of steel plants capacities in Europe

ArcelorMittal Corporation, Europe’s leading steelmaker, has begun temporarily shutting down some blast furnaces (BFs) at plants in France, Poland, Spain and Germany. The reason is the difficult economic situation of the company. Eurometal reports about it with the reference to data from S&P Global.

On September 29, 2022, the company suspended the blast furnace with a capacity of 4.5 million tons of steel per year at the plant in Gijon, Spain. The shutdown was scheduled for early September due to strong import competition and low demand.

The decision comes after ArcelorMittal delayed the launch of an electric arc furnace (EAF) after maintenance in August at the facility in Cestao, Spain. The capacity of this EAF is 2 million tons of steel per year.

According to the company, the date of the assets’ capacities’ restart has not been determined, because it will depend on market conditions.

Since the beginning of October 2022, blast furnace №3 with a capacity of 2.2 million tons of steel per year will be stopped for 10 days at the plant in Dombrowa-Hurnych, Poland.

In France ArcelorMittal has stopped production at one of its blast furnaces from September 19, 2022. The plant has started work on replacing the furnace lining, which will take up to seven weeks.

One of the two blast furnaces at the flat rolled plant in Bremen, Germany is also subject to shutdown. The capacity of the two BFs is 3.8 million tons of steel per year. The corporation has not yet named the period for which the furnace in Bremen will be shut down.

The company also announced the suspension of the direct reduction plant in Hamburg with a capacity of 600,000 tons of rolled steel per year in the third quarter of 2022.

European steel producers are suffering due to weak demand and extremely high energy prices.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in September 2022, the European Commission plans to introduce a single electricity price limit for the entire market at the level of €180 MWh as part of the EU’s initial package of emergency measures to curb electricity prices. The cap will apply directly to the price of electricity produced by non-gas plants.