ArcelorMittal to idle furnace at Fos and Eisenh ttenstadt

Nov. 17, 2010 - ArcelorMittal plans to temporarily idle two further blast furnaces within its flat carbon Europe division in December: one at Fos-sur-Mer in southeastern France and one at Eisenh ttenstadt in eastern Germany, a group spokesperson said.
"ArcelorMittal will continue to adjust its production output in Europe in line with the low demand we are seeing in the region for the fourth quarter of 2010," the company comments.
At Fos, blast furnace No 2, with a capacity of 7,000 tonnes/day of pig iron, will be stopped. The strip plant's other furnace with a similar capacity remains in operation.
At Eisenh ttenstadt, blast furnace No 1, the smaller of two at the site, will be halted. Its capacity of 500,000 tonnes/year compares to 1.5m t/y for the larger No 5 furnace which continues operating. This strip plant largely supplies eastern European countries, the spokesperson notes.
ArcelorMittal also plans to idle blast furnace No 3 at Galati in Romania on 19 November.
Currently, the company is still running 18 out of its 25 blast furnaces in Europe, but this will fall to 15 in December, the spokesperson adds.
"There is no new announcement" about the No 5 blast furnace at Krakow, which was idled in the summer, an ArcelorMittal Poland spokesperson tells SBB. "The scheduled start-up date will depend on the situation in the steel market," she explains.
A spokesperson for ArcelorMittal Ostrava in the Czech Republic has a similar comment: "Following modernisation, our BF No 3 is prepared for restarting. But we will [only] restart it, if the market situation is favourable..." This long-idled furnace had been planned to restart in May, as reported.
ArcelorMittal's two blast furnaces at Gij n, northern Spain, have escaped idling currently. A Spanish industry source suggests this may be related to the fact that the Spanish automotive sector is doing reasonably well thanks to export sales, and that Gijon produces more specialised products like rails.
There are about 91 blast furnaces on 36 sites in Europe, according to regional steelmakers' federation Eurofer.