To Grow, Liberty Steel USA Will Have to Expand Into Flat-Rolled Markets, Executive Says
03/14/2019 - Between its reopened wire rod mill in South Carolina and its newly acquired mill in Illinois, Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel USA is producing at an annualized rate of a little more than 1 million tons.
“And we’re ramping up every month,” Vikrant Sharma, president of Liberty Steel Holdings USA, said Thursday.
Sharma’s comments came during the 15th annual Platts Steel Markets North America conference, which is being held Thursday and Friday in Chicago, Ill., USA. Sharma gave an overview of the company’s strategy in the U.S., where it sees opportunity for a domestic, EAF-based producer owing to America’s abundance of scrap and its reliance on imports.
Sharma said that between the two mills, Liberty has 1.8 million tons of installed capacity, which puts it about one-third of the way toward its goal of 5 million tons. Sharma said that to reach that goal, the company will have to look beyond long products manufacturing.
“We fully understand that we can’t do that with long products alone. We have to have a combination of long products and flat products,” he said.
Sharma’s comments came during the 15th annual Platts Steel Markets North America conference, which is being held Thursday and Friday in Chicago, Ill., USA. Sharma gave an overview of the company’s strategy in the U.S., where it sees opportunity for a domestic, EAF-based producer owing to America’s abundance of scrap and its reliance on imports.
Sharma said that between the two mills, Liberty has 1.8 million tons of installed capacity, which puts it about one-third of the way toward its goal of 5 million tons. Sharma said that to reach that goal, the company will have to look beyond long products manufacturing.
“We fully understand that we can’t do that with long products alone. We have to have a combination of long products and flat products,” he said.
