LIBERTY Galaty re-suspends blast furnace No. 5 after restart in December

Romanian steelmaker LIBERTY Galati, part of the GFG Alliance group of companies owned by Sajiv Gupta, has re-suspended its recently restarted blast furnace No. 5 (BF 5). This is reported by Argus.Media.

The unit was shut down during the Christmas holidays. The main reason for the blast furnace shutdown was interruptions in the supply of raw materials. The company has already shut down the BF for this reason in October 2023, as the raw materials were not delivered to the plant due to unfavorable weather conditions. The unit resumed full operation in mid-December 2023.

Currently, LIBERTY Galati produces hot-rolled coils from imported slabs and plans to restart BF No. 5 in the coming weeks. Next week, LIBERTY is expected to ship large volumes of iron ore to the plant from the port of Constanta to avoid further disruptions due to weather conditions.

As GMK Center reported earlier, on October 17, 2023, it became known that LIBERTY Steel had shut down the only operating blast furnace at the Romanian LIBERTY Galati plant. The main reasons for the shutdown at that time were severe weather conditions in the Black Sea and a sharp drop in the water level in the Danube. This affected the supply of sufficient raw materials for the safe operation of the unit. Sources suggested that the restart would take place on October 24.

The company announced the resumption of the blast furnace in November. At the beginning of the month, the restart process began, and the unit was expected to reach its design capacity within a few days, but the full-fledged operation of the BF began only in mid-December. The plant planned to focus on the production of semi-finished products.