Nucor’s Louisiana DRI plant was reportedly shut down in an unanticipated outage on July 26, 2017. The lack of DRI flow was expected to further support busheling scrap in the August buy-cycle.
Initial expectations for its down period was 2-3 weeks for repairs. According to sources, the DRI plant will be down longer than initially expected and the outage may run into September, thereby affecting customers nationally. The shortage in DRI is expected to provide prime scrap grades, such as busheling, with additional price support in the September buy-cycle.