Steel mills restarting 34% of blast furnace capacity idled in COVID-19 curbs: UBS

London — Around 22 blast furnaces are currently being restarted by steelmakers around the world, as steel demand picks up and also for operational reasons, analysts from UBS said in a Sept. 8 report.
The restarts represent around 34% of the total blast furnace capacity that was hot-idled or temporarily halted due to COVID-19, and the rest can be expected to restart by year-end, according to the report.

"This is not a surprise, given the time-constraints of hot idling and as demand is picking up," said analysts led by Myles Allsop. "We expect most idled BFs to restart by end-20; this is needed for pig iron production ex-China to be flat h/h in 2H."

A total of 72 blast furnaces around the world with capacity of 132 million mt of crude steel were hot-idled or banked in 2020 as a result of COVID-19-related factors, said UBS, citing research from CRU.

According to the research from both UBS and CRU, the idled BFs were located 31 in Europe of which 8 have now restarted; 26 in North America of which 6 have restarted; 13 in Latin America of which 4 have restarted; 46 in Asia of which 16 have restarted, and 15 in the rest of the world of which 6 have restarted.

Some steelmakers are restarting furnaces in response to demand, which has partially recovered from April lows, but remains down around 30% year-to-July, according to UBS. However, others are reopening their furnaces because otherwise these will cool and may get blocked and inoperable, the analysts said.

"Typically the minimm length a BF is banked is around three months due to economics and the maximum is around six months (after which it is hard to sustain the heat)," they said.