ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih has permanently ceased production at its blooming mill

On March 11, PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih completed its final production campaign in the blooming shop—all planned operations there have been fully carried out. This is stated in the company’s press release.

The steel mill produced the entire required volume of billets in this shop ahead of schedule, creating a sufficient stock for further processing—approximately 150,000 tons.

Following the shutdown of this unit, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih will proceed to process the accumulated stock into finished products, specifically rebar, on its operational rolling mills. This production campaign will be the final one for those units that operated exclusively on billets produced by the blooming mill—namely, light-gauge mills No. 2 and No. 3. After processing the existing stock this year, they will also be shut down.

At the same time, the company will continue a large-scale transformation of its rolling operations in response to the introduction of CBAM and the rapid rise in electricity prices, which will result in the elimination of approximately 1,000 jobs. As part of this process, rolled steel production will be consolidated onto a smaller number of mills that align with existing production flows and the sizes of billets available for processing.

The restructuring of the rolling mill operations is a continuation of the anti-crisis measures that have already been announced. The total number of job cuts at the company could reach 3,400.

As noted, AMKR will support workers during the transition period. The priority is to preserve key professional competencies and transfer qualified specialists to other positions within the company.

Further announcements regarding the transformation process and the schedule for shutting down individual units will be made as the relevant technological stages are completed.

It was previously reported that the blooming shop would be shut down in the second quarter of 2026 due to a number of factors. One of these was the European Commission’s decision to implement the CBAM without any exceptions or a transition period for Ukrainian producers. This led to the immediate loss of the European market for the company and affected production volumes and capacity utilization at individual divisions and facilities.

An additional factor was the energy crisis that ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih has faced during the war, particularly the extremely high cost of electricity in Ukraine. This led to a significant increase in production costs and further undermined the economic viability of steel production, especially in the blooming shop.

In late February of this year, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih announced the forced suspension of production activities at its subsidiary, Casting and Mechanical Plant LLC (LMP). The company attributed this decision to the current economic and market conditions under which the enterprise operates in Ukraine amid a full-scale war.

As reported by GMK Center, the іеууд production of PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is currently operating two blast furnaces and expects to maintain this level throughout the year. The company’s CEO, Mauro Longobardo, spoke about this in an interview with Interfax Ukraine.