US Steel producing steel again at Granite City Works

The blast furnace at US Steel's Granite City, Illinois works, which had been idled since last December, is back online as of this week.

The company had informed union officials in mid-June that orders were looking strong enough to restart one of the mill's two blast furnaces, as well as some coil-making operations. The target date for molten iron to enter the oxygen furnace was Wednesday, July 8, but the process started a day early, on Tuesday.

About 800 of the 1,600 workers at Granite City that lost their jobs when the mill was idled in December (excluding the 390 layoffs resulting at its coke operations in February) have returned back to work so far to resume production at the plant, and the union hopes to see the number of recalled workers continue to increase in the coming weeks.

Granice City Works has two blast furnaces and an annual raw steelmaking capability of 2.8 million tons. With two continuous slab casters and lines for hot strip, pickling, cold reduction, hot dip galvanizing and Galvalume, the mill is a leading supplier of high-quality HR, CR and coated sheet steel products to customers in the US construction, container, piping and tubing, service center, and automotive industries.