The latest in a string of North American steel production cutbacks, Nucor Steel Decatur shut down production last Friday due to a lack of orders.
Sources at the Alabama flat rolled mill say that the shutdown will last a few days before operations resume sometime this week, though the mill does not yet know when. The mill operated five of seven days last week and expects to operate at least four days this week. Employees are continuing to report to work for plant maintenance and improvements.
Nucor Decatur is not the only US mill to adjust or scale back production as of late -- ArcelorMittal will shut down blast furnaces at its Cleveland, Ohio and Burns Harbor, Indiana operations, and Severstal Wheeling recently announced that it will extend a maintenance outage at its Mingo Junction, Ohio plant. Severstal also said recently that it will cut its total steel output at its US operations by 30 percent.
KeyStone Steel and Wire will close down for a total of three weeks in October and November for repairs to its reheat furnace, and maintenance outages at many US steel mills that were originally planned for the fourth quarter have been pushed forward to the third quarter. Not all mills are forthcoming about whether or by how much they are trimming production but, due to the freeze in buying, further production cuts are expected across the board.
Data on US raw steel production confirm that, at the very least, integrated mills are reducing output. For the week ended October 11, 2008, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported that raw steel production in the US totaled 1,869,000 net tons, down 3.8 percent from the previous week. Production at all eight major US steel producing districts that AISI tracks registered decreases from the previous week. In addition, production capacities of 78.3 percent were utilized in the week ended October 11, 2008, compared to the 81.4 percent capacity utilization in the previous week, and the 88.5 percent of production capacity utilized a year ago (for the week ended October 11, 2007). In the last several weeks, AISI data show that US raw steel production has been at its lowest weekly levels since March 2007.