ArcelorMittal to restart BF in Dunkirk in May, still assessing damage at Gijon

ArcelorMittal plans to resume operations at blast furnace (BF) 4 in Dunkirk, France during May, while no timeline has been specified for the restart of BF “A” in Gijon, a spokesperson told Fastmarkets on Friday April 21.

ArcelorMittal’s BF 4 in Dunkirk was idled following the outbreak of a fire at the end of March.

“The restart of blast furnace 4 will not be possible before at least [late] May,” the spokesperson told Fastmarkets.

There are three BFs at the Dunkirk site with combined capacity of about 6.9 million tonnes per year of pig iron. The site can produce 4.6 million tpy of hot-rolled coil.

Only BF 3 is currently operational at Dunkirk—BF 2 has been idled since June 2022.

“While waiting for the restart of blast furnace 4, only blast furnace 3 is in operation at the Dunkirk site and all other industrial tools are adapting their operation accordingly. The ArcelorMittal France site in Dunkirk is adapting the operation of its facilities with a single blast furnace, with the objective of limiting the impact on customers as much as possible by relying on the group’s other European sites,” the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the company did not specify a timeline for the restart of BF “A” in Gijon, Spain.

The company’s 2.35 million tpy BF “A” in Gijon has been idled since March 22, following a fire.

“[Clearing] works at BF A will continue at least for two weeks more,” the spokesperson told Fastmarkets on Friday.

Due to the unplanned outages at two BFs ArcelorMittal is unlikely to have spot availability of HRC earlier than September, according to several sources, while deliveries of previous orders will be delayed by eight weeks.

Market sources said they foresee a shortage of 1 million tonnes of HRC as a result of production disruptions, with peak supply tightness anticipated during June-August.

The acute supply tightness due to recent production disruptions at ArcelorMittal, along with scheduled maintenance at Tata Steel IJmuiden and ArcelorMittal Dabrowa Gornicza was one of the key factors supporting European HRC prices amid quiet trading, sources said.

European buyers, meanwhile, believe there will not be a shortage of commodity-grade HRC, despite the disruptions.

“The level of stocks of commodity-grade HRC is quite high, and there are imports available at really attractive prices,” a distributor in the Netherland said.

Fastmarkets calculated its daily steel hot-rolled coil index, domestic, exw Northern Europe at €840.00 ($921) per tonne on April 20, down by €2.50 per tonne from €842.50 per tonne on Wednesday.

The index was down by €12.50 per tonne week on week and down by €5.00 per tonne month on month.

Published by: Julia Bolotova