Italian steel producer Arvedi to restart upgraded EAF week of Sept. 13: source

Italian steel producer Arvedi will restart production at its largest electric-arc furnace, No 2, idled since early August for upgrading, at the beginning of the week starting Sept. 13, an executive close to the company confirmed to S&P Global Platts on Sept. 8.

Arvedi is the second-largest Italian producer of flat products and it has two EAFs: No. 1 has 1.4 million mt/year of crude steel capacity and was installed in 2018 by Primetals technologies to replace an existing EAF, and No. 2, for which the recent upgrade is intended to make more cost efficient and to increase its capacity to around 2.8 million mt/year of crude steel from 2.2 million mt. The revamped EAF was built in 2008 by Tenova and the upgrade work were planned months ago. The EAF was supposed to restart production at the beginning of September, but it will restart just few days later than scheduled because of a small fire caused by a short circuit in the plant’s cooling tower.

“The absence of Arvedi in the market has helped even more the coils prices to increase, there is recovery in the steel demand in Italy and overall in Europe,” a market source said. “In Italy, in particular Ilva in Taranto, is still producing at its lowest historical production (3.5 million crude steel a year) so Arvedi will benefit now by the increased demand and higher prices.”

Platts HRC EXW Southern Europe increased by Eur43.50/mt since May 1, when prices were at Eur417/mt base ex-works.

Arvedi is not a listed company, according to its latest 2019 financial statement the Italian steel producer registered last year an increase in volumes by 1.5% year on year to 4.3 million mt of steel products with earnings that reached Eur2.76 billion in 2019 down by 10% year on year on lower margins.

The company is focused also to reduce its emissions and last year invested Eur180 million, mainly to become carbon free in few years. From 2007 to 2019 Arvedi invested in total Eur2.04 billion to relaunch and re-modernize the mill.

— Annalisa Villa