Big River Steel Restarts Arkansas Galvanizing Line After Unplanned Outage

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Big River Steel announced its decision to restart its galvanizing line this weekend.

According to the company press release, it is about to finish drying out the refractory. The zinc pot will be recharged in the next few days. It expects shipments from the line to resume over the weekend. It must be noted that the galvanizing line has a capacity to produce nearly 550,000 short tons per year.

As per market participants, the galvanized supply in the U.S. continues to remain tight, mainly due to increased demand from automobile manufacturers, who have reopened their production plants after Covid-19 related shutdowns.  The supply is expected to remain tight through the rest of the year. The construction sector, another major consumer of galvanized steel, has also started signs of revival. The outage had occurred at a time when flat-rolled prices were reigning high.

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The line was damaged after the mill suffered a power outage on 30^th August. The power at the Arkansas mill was cut for 24 hours following a substation failure. When power was restores, all operations resumed normally, except the galvanizing line which underwent electrical failure.