ArcelorMittal shuts down one more BF in Europe

ArcelorMittal will idle another blast furnace in Europe – this time in Poland – amid high costs and weak demand for steel products, the company said on Friday September 9 in a release seen by Fastmarkets.Operations at the company’s 2.3-million-tonne-per-year BF No 3 in Dabrowa Górnicza, Poland, will be suspended before the end of September, it said.

The main reasons for the output cut were cited by ArcelorMittal as the soaring price of energy, which has undermined its competitiveness, weak demand for finished steel products and increased levels of steel imports to the European Union.

“The market in Europe has weakened even more during the summer period. We are observing a decrease in demand, which leads to an order book below the minimum working point of two blast furnaces,” Frederik Van De Velde, chief executive officer of ArcelorMittal Poland, said.

The Dabrowa Górnicza site operates two BFs with a combined capacity of 2.7 million tpy of pig iron. Only BF No 2 will remain operational at Dabrowa Górnicza from the fourth quarter 2022.

The BF stoppage at Dabrowa Górnicza will also affect coil output at ArcelorMittal’s Krakow site, Fastmarkets understands.

ArcelorMittal permanently closed the hot end at Krakow steelworks in 2020 amid poor market fundamentals.

Since then, the slab to feed Krakow’s 3.3 million tpy hot-rolling mill were supplied from ArcelorMittal’s Dabrowa Górnicza steelworks. Krakow steelworks also produces cold-rolled coil, hot-dip galvanized coil and organic-coated coil, according to Fastmarkets’ information.

Dabrowa Górnicza steelworks has installed capacity to produce 5 million tpy of crude steel. The company can manufacture 3 million tpy of steel slab and about 3 million tpy of billet and bloom. Dabrowa Górnicza also produces merchant bars and long rails.

In recent weeks, ArcelorMittal has been gradually reducing steel output across its European sites to adjust operations amid challenging market fundamentals.

Published by: Julia Bolotova