ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest steel producers, plans to restart blast furnace N° 2 at its plant in Fos-sur-Mer, France, in April 2023.

The company stopped one of the melting furnaces of the French factory in December 2022 due to high electricity costs, high volume of imports of steel products into the European Union, weak demand and high prices.

Since the end of 2022, steel coil prices in Europe have begun to recover, but factories have extended deadlines to carry out repair work in their units.

ArcelorMittal expects the steel demand in the automotive sector to improve in the coming months, which is why the company has resumed operations of most of its idle energies by the end of 2022.

ArcelorMittal has resumed production at the European plants amid evidently increased steel demand at the start of 2023; around 10% of the company’s blast furnaces in the EU remained idle, compared to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2022.

At the Dombrova-Hurnych plant in Poland, production has resumed at Furnace N° 3.

In Dunkirk, France, two furnaces have been started, all steel mills are operating in Germany but at reduced capacity after the last restart, and the blast furnace of ArcelorMittal Asturias in Spain is running at about 70% capacity.

In 2022, the steel companies of ArcelorMittal Group in Europe reduced steel production by 13.3% year-on-year to 31.9 million tonnes.

Steel shipments for the year amounted to 30.18 million tonnes, 9% less than in 2021.

Year-to-date steel sales rose 9.1% year-on-year to $47.26 billion amid a promising start to the year.

ArcelorMittal is a leading global steel and mining company present in 60 countries.