Steel: the crisis is such that Arcelor Mittal will close two blast furnaces in France
As markets prepare for more bad news on steel, ArcelorMittal plans to shut down one of the two blast furnaces at the Fos-sur-Mer site in southern France. The Luxembourg group said on November 4 that the move is a direct response to current market conditions.
“In a strongly deteriorated macroeconomic environment, combined with the strong impact of the surge in energy prices and the increase in steel imports into Europe, the Fos-sur-Mer site is facing a slowdown in steel demand. Order forecasts are down for the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, ”the group said in a statement.
According to Bruno Ribo, CEO of ArcelorMittal Méditerranée, the BF website n. 2 will be shut down from December until market conditions permit. ArcelorMittal Méditerranée's activities consist of Fos-sur-Mer and the special steel manufacturer Saint Chély d'Apcher.
The blast furnaces of Fos-sur-Mer each have a diameter of 11.8 meters. They can produce a total of 7,000 tons of pig iron per day. The plant has an estimated nominal capacity of 60 million tons of crude steel annually, which is melted into hot rolled coil slabs using two 335-ton basic oxygen furnaces.
Steel news focused on Asian closures and supply
The planned closure of Fos-sur-Mer follows several other closures of ArcelorMittal. Starting in September, the company began closing sites in Germany, Poland, France and Spain. As with other commodity producers, poor economic prospects remain the main reason for these closures.
The growing global recession and imports from Southeast Asia continue to put downward pressure on hot rolled prices in Europe, which means more bad news on steel. At the end of October, the steel mills offered flat rolled products at 700-720 euros (695-715 dollars) per tonne EXW. This is a decrease from the 740-750 euros (735-745 dollars) at the end of September. At the end of September, HRC transactions from Vietnam reached € 680-685 ($ 680-685) per metric ton CIF for Bilbao and Antwerp. It is worth noting that these figures also referred to the January delivery.
It was also reported that the mill's latest offers included delivery. As a commercial source noted last week, Chinese paper mills were offering $ 585 CFR in European ports. Meanwhile, EU anti-dumping measures continue to affect Chinese steel imports. According to the source, this would decrease the likelihood of the latest HRC offerings having a direct impact on the markets of the bloc's 27 members.
So the global crisis accelerates that of European steel, increasingly left to itself. Large global groups, such as Mittal, are closing down to reduce supply or transfer it elsewhere.
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The article Steel: the crisis is such that Arcelor Mittal will close two blast furnaces in France comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/acciaio-la-crisi-e-tale-che-arcelor-mittal-chiudera-due-altiforni-in-francia/ on Fri, 11 Nov 2022 17:19:32 +0000.