US Steel to shut another two blast furnaces for work in fourth quarter: spokeswoman

US Steel is planning two further blast furnace outages in fourth quarter at its Gary Works in Indiana and Granite City Works in Illinois, along with another earlier announced, a company spokeswoman told S&P Global Platts on Aug. 18.

The steelmaker's largest blast furnace, No. 14 at the Gary Works, will undergo a 10-day outage beginning Nov. 30, according to the spokeswoman. The blast furnace has a rated annual capacity of 2.54 million mt/year, according to Association for Iron and Steel Technology data. Work on the unit would start after the planned Nov. 9 return of the mill's No. 6 furnace from the earlier-announced 38-day outage.

Blast furnace BF-B at the St. Louis-area Granite City mill is also planned to undergo a seven-day outage beginning Oct. 1, according to the spokeswoman. The furnace has a rated annual capacity of 1.4 million mt/year, according to US Steel's second-quarter earnings results.

In addition to those blast furnace outages, the company has also announced a 10-day outage in October at its Big River Steel, Arkansas, operations.

US HRC prices hovered around all-time highs on Aug. 17, at $1,900/st. Market sources recently noted openings related to automotive shutdowns but continued citing the importance of supply losses due to planned outages in the fourth quarter.

The new outage additions to the list caught buy-side sources by surprise. Those four planned outages would cause a potential melt loss of approximately 315,000 mt, according to Platts estimates.

With recent outages announced by US Steel, Platts estimate for potential melt/rolling impact in the US during Q4 moved higher to 1.42 million mt-1.53 million mt.