ArcelorMittal restarts blast furnace at Spanish steel plant on January 15th

Reuters reported that ArcelorMittal will restart blast furnace B at its Gijón plant in Spain on January 15th after a 6 month shutdown for maintenance works amid weak market conditions.

The steelmaker said the decision to restart the furnace was prompted by a recent agreement on tariffs reached with the port of Gijón expectations of new electricity tariffs and an agreement with unions that introduces more flexible labor conditions and a labor cost reduction.

ArcelorMittal said in a statement that "All these measures have contributed to reinforcing the competitiveness of the products manufactured by the Spanish units of the company improving their ability to access export markets in a context marked by a drop of more than 25% in steel consumption in southern Europe a situation which is further aggravated in Spain by the collapse of the construction sector and severe decline in private consumption."

Blast furnace B at the Gijón plant has annual production capacity of 2.4 million tonne of steel.