Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA), one of the largest steel producers in the country, said that on Thursday, December 15, it will restart production of steel slab after the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) suspended energy supplies in late November due to non-payment. The service has already been restored.
"Once the external power (from the CFE) has been reconnected, blast furnace #5 started the production process and should indeed make the first discharges next Thursday, which will resume slab production," Francisco Orduna told SteelOrbis. one of the spokespersons for AHMSA.
Due to non-payment, the CFE suspended the medium voltage electric power service on November 29 and on the 30th it suspended the high voltage service. The invoice of MXN 155 million ($7.7 million) has already been paid.
After the payment, the CFE took 10 days to restore the power supply. In that period, Orduna told SteelOrbis in an email, "many" equipment operations remained active with power generation from their own plants.
According to the spokesman, during the slab production stoppage, AHMSA was producing sheets with the slab it had in inventory. The company produces plates, hot rolled coil (HRC), cold rolled coil (CRC), among others.
Without providing data, he said the power outage led to lower steel production, thus lowering the requirement for truckloads. It regularly uses 480 transport units, although of those with 20 units there was a delay in payment.
In the third quarter of the year, the company shipped 340.6 million metric tons of steel products, 19.0 percent less than the volume for July-September 2021.
Orduna specified that the workers of the steel plants and mines continue to work regularly and that this period was used to carry out maintenance work.