Liberty Steel decommissioned the only blast furnace in operation at the plant in Romania – Argus

The Liberty Steel company suspended the operation of the only operating blast furnace at the plant in Galața (Romania), informs Argus.Media.

According to the representative of the company, blast furnace №5 at the Liberty Galati steel plant is temporarily stopped due to severe weather in the Black Sea and a sharp drop in the water level in the Danube. This affected the supply of a sufficient amount of raw materials for the safe operation of the unit.

He noted that the payment of salaries to employees working in the affected areas continues as usual, and the blast furnace is planned to be launched at the end of this month. Sources suggest that the relaunch is scheduled for October 24.

As Argus notes, in September 2023 Liberty closed the largest coke battery at the plant in Ostrava (Czech Republic). At that time, sources close to the company’s management reported that the possibility of stopping the blast furnaces in the EU was being considered due to a lack of working capital. Recently, the company has been importing Russian and Indonesian slabs through trading companies and its own unit, Alvance, as it has cut blast furnace production.

As GMK Center reported earlier, at the end of 2022, Liberty Galati stopped blast furnace №5 for maintenance. Investments in unit renewal amounted to 18.3 million lei (almost €4 million). In March 2023, the steel plant announced the restart of the blast furnace.

Also, Liberty Galati, which is part of Sajiv Gupta’s GFG Alliance group of companies, faced with more than a dozen claims from local suppliers for unpaid bills. GFG Alliance, in turn, noted that small disputes do not affect the operations of the steel plant, and many of these small claims are disputed and unjustified.