Jerry Nelson, General Manager, Commercial-Sales for Sparrows Point, Maryland-based RG Steel sent a letter late Tuesday night to RG Steel customers discussing the status of its recent idling of the "L" blast furnace at the Sparrows Point steel mill and updates regarding its other operations. According to the letter, the blast furnaces remains on "hot idle" but can restart within a few days once the exact day of the restart is set. Finishing operations, which were slowed during the holidays, are expected to restart this week to process existing inventory.
Nelson also addressed RG's Steel's other facilities in Warren, Ohio and Wheeling, West Virginia, are "largely unaffected" by the Sparrows Point outage and are running as scheduled.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, on December 21 and 22, some workers at the Sparrows Point mill received layoff notices and were told not to report to work the following week. Days later, on December 27, RG Steel informed the State of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation that approximately 720 workers at its recently restarted Sparrows Point flat-rolled steel mill will be furloughed until at least March 4.