Liberty Steel resumes South Carolina steel rod output

Liberty Steel restarted production Jan. 18 at its previously idled Georgetown, South Carolina, steel rod mill, a company spokesperson told S&P Global Platts.

The Georgetown plant was idled in April 2020 amid declining market conditions at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

In December, Liberty first announced its plans to resume the idled rod capacity in response to strong and sustainable market conditions supported by anticipated government infrastructure spending and the US implementation of quotas on EU steel imports starting in 2022.

At the time of the restart announcement, the UK-based steelmaker said the Georgetown plant would receive billet from its Peoria, Illinois, long products mill for conversion into 10,000 st/month of finished rod.

Operations at Liberty's Peoria mill were halted in early December after an outage involving transformer units that power the site's melt shop.

Liberty's spokesperson declined to comment Jan. 18 regarding any updates for Peoria's operations. The mill has steelmaking capacity of 700,000 st/year and produces billet, rebar, wire rod, industrial wire and agricultural fence.