ArcelorMittal plans to restart Blast Furnace (BF) 4 at Dunkirk, France in May, while a restart date for Blast Furnace A at Gijón has not been set, a company spokesperson told Fastmarkets on Friday, April 21.
The ArcelorMittal BF 4 plant in Dunkirk was idle after a fire broke out at the end of March.
"Startup of blast furnace No. 4 will not be possible until at least the end of May," a Fastmarkets spokesman said.
There are three blast furnaces at the site in Dunkirk with a total capacity of about 6.9 million tons of pig iron per year. The site can produce 4.6 million tons of hot-rolled steel per year.
Currently, only BF 3 is operating in Dunkirk - BF 2 has been idle since June 2022.
“Waiting for the restart of the blast furnace Blast Furnace 3 is the only one operating at the Dunkirk site, and all other industries are adapting their operations accordingly. ArcelorMittal France's Dunkirk site is adapting its single blast furnace operations to limit customer impact as much as possible by relying on the group's other European sites,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the company did not specify a timeline for the restart of BF “ A" in Gijón, Spain.
The company's 2.35 million tonnes per year DP "A" in Gijón has been idle since March 22 due to a fire.
"Cleaning at BF A will continue for at least another two weeks,” a Fastmarkets spokesman said on Friday.
According to several sources, due to unplanned outages at two blast furnace plants, ArcelorMittal is unlikely to be able to receive hot-rolled steel before September, and deliveries of previous orders will delayed by eight weeks.
Market sources said they foresee a shortage of 1 million tons of hot rolled coil as a result of production disruptions, with a peak supply shortage expected in June-August.
According to Acute supply shortages due to recent production disruptions at ArcelorMittal, along with scheduled maintenance at Tata Steel IJmuiden and ArcelorMittal Dabrowa Gornicza, were one of the key factors supporting European hot-rolled coil prices amid calm trade, the sources said.
Meanwhile, European buyers believe that there will be no shortage of commercial hot-rolled steel, despite the failures.
“The level of stocks of commercial hot-rolled steel is quite high, and there are imports at really attractive prices,” — said a distributor in the Netherlands.
Fastmarkets calculated its daily index for domestic hot-rolled products exported from Northern Europe at EUR 840.00 (USD 921) per tonne on April 20, down EUR 2.50 per ton from 842.50 euros per tonne on Wednesday.
The index fell by 12.50 euros per tonne per week and 5.00 euros per tonne per month compared to the previous month.
