U.S. sheet mill outage plans are piling up through the remainder of the year, totaling at least 100 days of cuts among various mills, according to S&P Global Platts analysis.
Most major U.S. flat-rolled steel producers have some sort of scheduled maintenance planned through the remainder of the year with nearly two-thirds of the outages expected in October. The total rated capacity to be removed from the market will be between 630,000 st and 701,000 st. Capacity levels are based on the Association for Iron and Steel Technology data and industry estimates.
AK Steel Dearborn in Michigan is set to undergo an outage in October which is “expected to be less than 20 days,” according to a spokeswoman for the company. If the outage for a blast furnace reline goes a full 20 days it would remove an estimated 180,000 st of rated production.
ArcelorMittal USA also has downtime planned at its Burns Harbor, Indiana mill equating to nearly 150,000 st over a 20 day period, as well as over 40,000 st down over a 10 day period at its sheet mill in Cleveland. The company could not be reached for comment.
Nucor and Steel Dynamics have two outages slated for October. Nucor’s Hickman, Arkansas mill is set to go down for 10 days, which equates to 82,000 st of melt capacity, while SDI’s Butler, Indiana mill will be down for four days equating to 32,000 st, according to market sources.
SDI and North Star Bluescope are set to take downtime in November. SDI’s Columbus, Mississippi outage is scheduled for four days totaling 36,800 st of rated capacity while North Star’s Delta, Ohio mill will be out for five days totaling 30,000 st.
Nucor will reportedly have two more outages in December. Nucor Gallatin in Kentucky is slated to go down for 10 days in early December, removing 43,000 st from the market, while Nucor Decatur (Alabama) is planned to be down for a week removing 48,000 st.
Nucor has scheduled downtime at its Crawfordsville, Indiana mill but the timing is uncertain. The outage was initially scheduled to begin in early September but there were indications it had been pushed into the fourth quarter. It was slated to be down for 14 days which totals 91,000 st of total melt.
Published in the October 2019 Edition