ArcelorMittal Poland has announced that it will temporarily shut down its Dabrowa Gornicza plant's blast furnace no 2 for maintenance costing over $167 million. The maintenance is expected to last for several weeks and will be the largest blast furnace investment ever carried out in Poland. The company had previously idled BF 3 last September due to weak demand but guaranteed trade unions that it would be restarted no later than when BF 2 maintenance would begin. The BF 3 restart was initiated in January, meaning that ArcelorMittal Poland will operate with only one BF during the maintenance.
HBIS Group Serbia Iron & Steel, a Serbian steelmaker owned by Chinese company Hebei Iron & Steel Group, is set to restart its blast furnace No. 1 at the Smederevo plant by the end of this week, as reported by Steel Orbis. The furnace has an annual capacity of 900,000 million metric tons but was temporarily shut down in July 2022 due to weak steel demand, lower prices, and high costs.
According to Mr. Frederik Van De Velde, CEO of ArcelorMittal Poland, the maintenance project will include research and development projects at the blast furnace, which will create pilot installations, such as a closed cooling system with innovative coolers and a modern and ecological blast furnace gas treatment plant. The implementation of these projects is expected to increase the efficiency of cooling water use and reduce the amount of waste while further using blast furnace gas as fuel.
In 2022, ArcelorMittal Poland saw a 15% YoY decline in crude steel production to 3.4 million metric tons, falling below the 2020-pandemic output of 3.9 million metric tons.
Source: SteelGuru
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