Steel Market Production Cuts – Gerdau Long Steel North America is planning a 10-day outage beginning at the end of July at its 800,000 tpy crude steel capacity Sayreville NJ plant which has a 600,000 tpy rolling capacity of rebar, angles, flats, squares and handrails.

Steel Market Production Cuts – ArcelorMittal told reporters today that it is reviewing its European flat carbon operations due to poor economic conditions – with trading sources commenting that they could easily shut down three more blast furnaces inEurope.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Last Friday, ArcelorMittal began idling its 1 million tpy crude steel capacity hot strip mill inOstrava,Czech Republicwith an unspecified restart date that will depend on market demand. Before the outage the mill had been running at 30% capacity.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Some steelmakers inEuropehave reportedly been considering extending their summer stoppages by a few extra days or a week according to a source at European steel association, Eurofer.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Workers at Evraz’s South African subsidiary Highveld Steel have begun striking against potential retrenchments amidst the company being in the process of stopping production at the 1 million tpy crude steel capacity Witbank Plant.

Steel Market Production Cuts – Belarusian steelmaker BMZ has suspended production of its new 600,000 tpy HRC rolling mill.

Steel Market Production Increases – European steelmaker Vorskla Steel hopes to restart its Danish mill, VorsklaDenmark, by March of 2013 when it completes its capacity expansion on the meltshop which will lift total capacity to 800,000 tpy from 500,000.

Sources: Steel Business Briefing, American Metal Market, SteelOrbis, The Citizen