Houston — JSW Steel USA has put on hold its plans to construct a new electric arc furnace at its plate mill in Baytown, Texas, the company's US CEO said in a statement Monday.
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Registro"While JSW USA is fully underway in modernizing the plate mill at Baytown, Texas, given the current market conditions and the prevailing policy environment, the company has for now decided to put on hold the backward integration project of installing an electric arc furnace and slab caster at Baytown," JSW USA CEO John Hritz said. "JSW USA, however, remains committed to being a fully melt and manufactured enterprise in the US and is working diligently on ramping up Mingo Junction's [1.5 million mt/year] EAF and Caster in Ohio."
JSW USA, a division of Mumbai-based parent company JSW Group, said in March 2018 it planned to invest $500 million at its Baytown, Texas, mill in a multi-phase project that would include the installation of an EAF.
The announcement came at a time of heightened trade tensions following US President Donald Trump's implementation of a 25% tariff on steel imports.
JSW's Baytown mill is dependent on imported slabs to produce its plate and pipe products.
-- Justine Coyne, justine.coyne@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Anthony Poole, newsdesk@spglobal.com