International Steel Group Inc. announced today that its ISG Riverdale Inc. subsidiary restarted operations on July 2, ahead of schedule, and is rapidly returning to normal operations.

ISG suffered an unscheduled outage at the Riverdale Plant's Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) when a portion of the base of the cooling tower section of the BOF off-gas cooling system failed. A new cooling tower, currently under construction, is expected to be in place later in July without further interruption in operations. The company has reallocated orders to other divisions to minimize the impact on customers.

ISG Riverdale credits the rapid return of the operation to the cooperation of production personnel with outside contractors and the assistance of numerous governmental agencies.

The company previously announced that the outage at Riverdale would not have a significant effect on second-quarter financial results.

International Steel Group Inc. is the largest integrated steel producer in North America, based on its capacity to cast approximately 21 million tons of steel products annually. It ships a variety of steel products from 13 major steel producing and finishing facilities in eight states, including hot-rolled, cold-rolled and coated sheets, tin mill products, carbon and alloy plates, rail products and semi-finished shapes serving the automotive, construction, pipe and tube, appliance, container and machinery markets. The Riverdale subsidiary is International Steel Group Inc.'s premier producer of mid-, high-carbon and alloy hot-rolled sheet steels.