The permanent closure of ArcelorMittal Poland’s coke oven battery in Krakow will not affect the output of semi-finished and flat steel products from either of the company’s plants in Krakow and Dabrowa Gornicza, a spokesperson told Fastmarkets on Tuesday July 23.
On July 19, ArcelorMittal Poland announced that it had decided to close the Krakow coke plant permanently. It had until then been hot-idled for eight months.
“At the end of last year, the only coke oven battery in Krakow was hot-idled,” Wojciech Koszuta, the chief executive officer of ArcelorMittal Poland, said. “Hot-idling of this plant allowed for the possible resumption of coke production if market conditions improved. Unfortunately, this has not happened.”
He added that a standstill process such as hot-idling was very costly due to the high price of the natural gas used to fuel the installation. Consequently, keeping the plant on that status was not economically justified.
“In addition, the decarbonization plans of many industries in the coming years will gradually reduce the demand for coke,” a company press release said.
In October 2020, the company permanently closed the hot zone at the Krakow steel mill due to the dramatic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the European steel market. The coke plant and rolling mills had remained operational.
“The coke oven battery in Krakow has capacity for 650,000 tonnes per year,” the company spokesperson told Fastmarkets, and this was used to feed the blast furnaces at Dabrowa Gornicza, which in turn produces slab for the hot-rolling and cold-rolling mills in Krakow.
As a result, after the closure of the coke oven battery, the rolling mills will be the only facilities operating at ArcelorMittal Poland’s site in Krakow. It produces hot-rolled coil, cold-rolled coil, hot-dipped galvanized coil and organic-coated coil.
“The permanent closure of the coke plant in Krakow will not affect the production at our other plants,” the spokesperson told Fastmarkets, adding that the company produces coke at its coke plant in Zdzieszowice, which is around 160km from Krakow and has capacity for around 4 million tpy of coke.
“[This unit] ensured continuity of production during the hot-idling of the Kraków coke plant, and we will have no problems now about the availability of coke,” the spokesperson added.
According to Fastmarkets’ sources, the closure of the coke oven battery in Krakow will not have a significant effect on the local market for flat steel products.
“The situation with HRC [in Poland] is dire, and I do not think it will change much,” a distributor source told Fastmarkets.
Prices of HRC in Central Europe have been largely stable in recent weeks. Local mills were hoping to increase prices for October-delivery coil, but slow demand was seen as a major obstacle for a price rise.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ most recent weekly price assessment for steel hot-rolled coil, domestic, exw Central Europe, narrowed downward to €620-630 ($675-686) per tonne on July 17 from €620-635 per tonne the previous week.
Published by: Julia Bolotova, Darina Kahramanova