Global steel giant ArcelorMittal will keep operating its blast furnace No. 2 at the Fos-sur-Mer mill near Marseilles in France until at least July, according to local media reports. The company’s BF No. 2 was previously scheduled to be temporarily shut down at the end of June due to insufficient orders.
ArcelorMittal also suspended one of the two blast furnaces at the location on March 23, following the coronavirus outbreak and so the Fos site has been running at 50 percent of its capacity, as previously reported by SteelOrbis.
The Fos-sur-Mer steel mill is one of the largest ArcelorMittal production sites in Europe with its four million mt per year production capacity, while it supplies 80 percent of its flat steel production to the automotive sector.