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U. S. Steel Steps up Start Date for No. 13 Blast Furnace Rebuild

05/12/2005 - United States Steel Corp. announced that it will take its Gary (Ind.) Works No. 13 Blast Furnace offline in late May, rather than on August 1 as previously announced.

United States Steel Corp. announced that it will take its Gary (Ind.) Works No. 13 Blast Furnace offline in late May, rather than on August 1 as previously announced.

U. S. Steel's announcement that it will take its Gary No. 13 Blast Furnace offline follows a recent announcement by Mittal Steel USA that the company will shut down its 1500-tons-per-day C-6 Blast Furnace in Cleveland for routine maintenance on the lining.

Mittal Steel USA will also take its 2000-tons-per-day H-3 Blast Furnace at Indiana Harbor off line indefinitely. The company had already taken Indiana Harbor Works' No. 6 Blast Furnace off line earlier this year.

Wheeling Pittsburgh also announced that it will permanently shut down its historic No. 1 Blast Furnace. Wheeling Pittsburgh's blast furnace shutdown is part of a planned transition to a a more flexible steelmaking process mix by combining production from the company's new Consteel EAF with traditional integrated technology.

The announcements come in the midst of dwindling demand prompted by inventory buildups in the service center sector.

U. S. Steel says the earlier shutdown will help to ensure an orderly transition to a more efficient major rebuild, allowing the company to run its four other domestic steel producing plants at more efficient levels. The company further commented that the outage will help it keep flat-rolled inventories in line with second quarter customer needs, which are currently expected to run about 7% lower than the first quarter. Lower domestic flat-rolled shipments are expected to push annual shipments below the company's most recent projection of 14.5 million tons.

In an April press release, the company announced plans for a major rebuild of Gary Works No. 13 Blast Furnace, the company's largest furnace and one of four furnaces it operates at Gary Works.

The rebuild is scheduled to be completed by early November.

U. S. Steel is an integrated steelmaker with five domestic steelmaking operations and 12 blast furnaces.