ArcelorMittal is yet to define whether it should restart two rolling mills it has idled at two different long steel plants in Brazil, a top executive told SteelOrbis in the sidelines of the Latin America steel conference, held this week from November 10-11 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
According to the company’s long carbon CEO for the Americas, Jefferson de Paula, the restart of ArcelorMittal’s rolling mill at its Piracicaba plant, in the state of Sao Paulo, is uncertain. So is the case of a second rolling mill installed at the company’s Monlevade plant, in the state of Minas Gerais.
“The market is the one who’ll say if we’ll resume operations at these rolling mills,” the executive said, while answering a question to SteelOrbis and speaking to other reporters.
“I wish it could restart tomorrow. But we need to have demand in order to take such a decision,” he said.
The executive said the company is currently analyzing the possibility of restarting the 500,000 mt equipment located at its Piracibaca mill, in the city of same name. “We’re likely to take a decision in January this year,” he added.
Earlier this year, at a conference in Brazil, Paula said the Monlevade rolling mill was “unlikely to be put offline”, however, it has confirmed the equipment is currently offline.
ArcelorMittal operates ten rolling mills in Brazil. The Piracicaba equipment was idled in August this year.
At the Alacero conference this week, de Paula said the Piracicaba mill is currently producing 600,000 mt of steel, out of a capacity of 1 million mt from two rolling mills. The company has a 3.7 million mt long steel capacity production.
As for the company’s performance in 2016 in the export market, the company just said “we’ll increase exports.” Asked in how much, if above 10 percent, de Paula replied: “I’m sure we’ll increase exports.”