SDI, Nucor hit with unplanned outages in South

Steel Dynamics and Nucor were both undergoing unplanned outages at two Southern mills, according to multiple market sources on June 24.

SDI's Columbus, Mississippi, mill ran into production issues over the past weekend with multiple buyers only starting to report details late in the week. The mill was heard to have an issue with one of the two furnaces at the mill, with the impacted furnace expected to be down for a total of seven days and a restart of potentially June 26.

Total production lost was estimated to be around 28,000 st but two other market sources indicated a potential of up to 50,000 st.

SDI could not be reached for confirmation.

In addition, Nucor Gallatin in Kentucky was understood to have stumbled out of its planned maintenance throughout the week. The mill had a planned 10- to 14-day outage during the month, according to market sources. Still, the mill was unable to restart until the evening of June 23. But the duration of the unscheduled downtime could not be confirmed.

Nucor could not immediately be reached for contact.

The outages appeared to be minor but given already tight domestic supply, any additional supply disruptions were unwelcomed by market participants. Multiple service centers appeared to be scrambling to sort out the SDI even on the day during June 24 with some correlating the news to the surge in US HRC futures.

Both the disruptions come as scheduled maintenance at domestic sheet mills is slated to increase through the remainder of the year. Nucor Gallatin is set to take nearly a month-long outage in the fourth quarter due to construction related to its capacity expansion.

In addition, the largest blast furnace in North America, Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor No. 7 is set to undergo a 45-day partial reline starting on Sept. 1, a company spokeswoman confirmed.