AK Steel issued a notice Friday under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act to hourly and salaried employees at its Ashland, Kentucky Works that it intends to temporarily idle the blast furnace and related steelmaking operations at the facility as a result of challenging domestic market conditions.
AK Steel said it does not intend to idle the hot-dip galvanizing line at Ashland Works that primarily services automotive customers.
AK Steel said it has appropriate steelmaking capacity at its other plants to meet customer requirements and does not expect any interruptions in shipments to its customers.
"We are taking this necessary step due to the onslaught of what we believe are unfairly traded imports of carbon steel that have been flooding our shores. These imports have substantially reduced order intake rates, production rates, shipment volumes and selling prices," said James L. Wainscott, Chairman, President and CEO of
AK Steel. "We will continue to closely monitor market conditions and run our overall operations as efficiently as possible to continue to meet our customers' needs."
AK Steel, along with other domestic steel companies, has filed anti-dumping and counter-vailing duty trade cases with the International Trade Commission with respect to coated, cold-rolled and hot-rolled carbon steel products in an attempt to combat these foreign imports.
The WARN notice begins a 60-day period that must be given prior to idling operations and laying-off employees under the WARN Act. If market conditions do not improve, it is expected that the idling of the affected portions of the facility will begin in mid-December of 2015 and could last more than six months.
Ashland Works produces carbon steel slabs, along with hot dip galvanized and galvannealed coated steels. The plant employs approximately 940 men and women.