U.S. Steel restarts Blast Furnace #8 at Gary Works

U.S. Steel has restarted the No. 8 blast furnace at its flagship Gary Works steel mill.

The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker, one of the Region's largest employers, idled both the No. 3 blast furnace at Mon Valley Works in Pennsylvania and the No. 8 furnace in Gary last year after steel prices came down from historic highs in 2021 amid fears of a looming recession.

U.S. Steel has restarted both blast furnaces over the past couple of weeks as market conditions have improved.

The steelmaker said it restarted the blast furnace because of rising demand and improving prices.

Steelmakers have gone from facing headwinds to getting winds behind their sales thus far this year. The domestic steel industry has especially benefited as automakers have ramped production back up after being hamstrung by semiconductor chip and other supply chain shortages in recent years.

"The flat-rolled segment’s order book reflects broad improvements across most end-markets," U.S. Steel said in a news release.

The No. 8 blast furnace at Gary Works can make up to 1.5 million tons of iron annually. It was originally idled for a planned maintenance project last year and was supposed to be restarted in August after three months of construction, but then market conditions deteriorated and U.S. Steel opted to leave it down until demand returned.

No one was laid off as a result of the idling. The temporarily displaced workers were moved to other parts of the sprawling steel mill that stretches for seven miles along the Lake Michigan lakeshore.

"We continue to monitor market conditions and bring furnaces back online when business conditions allow," U.S. Steel spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski said. "There is no employment impact from bringing #8 back online, nor was there any employment impact in bringing it down."

U.S. Steel also operates the Midwest Plant in Portage, which has many finishing lines that prepare the steel made at Gary Works for a variety of commercial uses.