The company confirmed the extended downtime to Fastmarkets.
“We have adjusted our production capacity to market demand. We decided to extend a March 2024 planned outage of Blast Furnace No2 into the second quarter of 2024,” the company said.
USSK has three blast furnaces with a combined capacity of 5 million tpy of pig iron. The steelmaker produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled and hot-dipped galvanized coil.
Prices for flat steel in Europe have been falling non-stop since early February 2024, following a short-term rebound in January that was driven by restocking.
In March 2024, Fastmarkets’ daily steel hot-rolled coil index, domestic, exw Northern Europe averaged €691.99 ($742.78) per tonne, down by €46.29 per tonne from €738.28 per tonne in February.
On April 15, the index was calculated at €638.96 per tonne, down by €0.21 per tonne from €639.17 per tonne on April 12.
Market participants told Fastmarkets they were not ruling out a further downward correction in April, given the weak demand and plentiful supplies.