An electrical short in a rolling mill motor has caused a production outage at Ipsco Inc.’s Montpelier, Iowa, facility. Ipsco estimates that the rolling mill outage, which is expected to last six days, will decrease earnings by approximately $0.05 per diluted share for the quarter.

The company has taken a number of actions that should help control the cost of the outage. It is expected the impact on sales volumes will be moderated as slab production will replace higher-value products while the rolling mill is down. With similar production capabilities in three other steelmaking facilities, the company also believes that customer orders will not be disrupted.

"We are fully capable of shifting production utilizing our other facilities and will dip into inventories to meet our customers’ needs during this outage," said David Sutherland, CEO and President of Ipsco. "While we never like to experience these issues, our footprint is designed to be flexible to adapt to such challenges as can be seen by the minimal expected impact on customers and earnings with this outage," he said.

Ipsco operates steel mills at three locations and pipe mills at six locations in the United States and Canada. As a low cost North American steel producer, Ipsco has a combined annual steelmaking capacity of 3,500,000 tons. The company's tubular facilities produce a wide range of tubular products including line pipe, oil and gas well casing and tubing, standard pipe and hollow structurals. Steel can also be further processed at Ipsco's five temper leveling and coil processing facilities.