The incident occurred due to the destabilization of the normal shutdown of the blast furnace, which caused a fire and heavy smoke. The staff were evacuated and there were no injuries. The company will assess the technical and production consequences of the incident, as well as material losses, and will continue to operate blast furnace B.
ArcelorMittal relaunched blast furnace A in Gijón in early February 2023. The unit has been inactivated since the end of September 2022 due to uncertain economic prospects and unfavorable market conditions. The steel plant was equipped with two blast furnaces with a total capacity of 4.7 million tons/year.
ArcelorMittal plans to restart the blast furnace No. 2 at its plant in Foss-sur-Mer, France, in April 2023. The company suspended one of the blast furnaces of the French plant in December 2022 due to high electricity costs, high volume imports of steel products to the EU, and weak demand and prices.
In early 2023, the company began to restore its European capacities due to increased demand. At the beginning of February 2023, about 10% of the company's blast furnaces in the EU remained idle, compared to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2022. In particular, the blast furnace No. 3 of the Polish factory in Dombrow-Hurnych has started working again, and two furnaces have been commissioned at the enterprise in Dunkirk, France.
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