Idled U. S. Steel Blast Furnace Back in Production
06/21/2018 - United States Steel Corporation has restarted one of two idled blast furnaces at its Granite City Works in Illinois and is again producing hot metal.
“Our ‘B’ restart occurred last week when we resumed steelmaking, which included 500 jobs,” a spokeswoman told AIST’s Steel News. American Metal Market first reported the development on Tuesday.
U. S. Steel announced in March that it would restart the B furnace and associated steelmaking operations as a result of expected demand arising from the Section 232 tariffs. In a follow-on announcement earlier this month, the company said it plans to restart Granite City’s A furnace this fall.
A spokeswoman said the company is looking to restart that furnace sometime around 1 October. Each of the furnaces has a nameplate capacity of 1.2 million tons annually, according to AIST records.