Raise the Hammer

I work at US Steel, there do not appear to be any intentions of selling off anything at this moment. The last part sold was the bar mill to Max Aicher from Germany. USS has no interest in safety critical bar and rod production so they sold that mill for a rumoured $25 million.

There are unused areas and buildings which could be parceled off and I wish they would be. There are parts of the old plant that would make an excellent rail switching yard, freeing up the West Harbour yard for development. Some excellent port access could also be sold to tie-in with a rail-yard making Hamilton a transportation hub, arguments about the trucking load on Hamilton roads duly noted.

So, as an update for anyone interested:

-USS metal finishing and rolling is crazy busy and only picking up more business. Lines idled for 7 years have been started and others idled rumored to start

-You may see some hiring in the finishing end soon

-The Coke Ovens are still producing and shipping out to other blast furnaces in the USS empire

-There are two new massive Coke Ovens being commissioned very soon in the States. There are worries that our coking capacity will no longer be needed in a couple of years. A coke oven shut-down would also shut-down By-Products, which removes the toxins from the gases produced when cooking coal into coke

-MANA (the sold bar mill) is in contract negotiations with USW 1005. MANA was a good news story that turned into a disaster. MANA assumed that they could buy hot steel from USS when they bought, how ever USS is not making iron or steel at Hamilton Works. MANA has been unable to source a North American supplier for steel in the quantity, price or more specifically the quality that is required for the safety critical bars they make. They are sourcing steel from Europe, nothing finalized. MANA has basically not made any sale-able product since the purchase

-The Blast Furnace is down. Steel demand in North America is currently only at %70 utilization. Guys are convinced the furnace will start again,I think they are mistaken. A start-up will cost about $100 million, current market demand will not support that kind of capital expenditure (IMHO). The only hope is that a major re-build of a massive USS Blast Furnace is looming (Gary Works), requiring it to be down for many months. Another smaller furnace also requires maintenance. Hamilton could run for a year or two to cover these outages.

So the possibility exists that Hamilton USS could only be a finishing plant, freeing up the land occupied by the Coke Ovens, BOF (the building with the flag on it), Caster, By-Products, Furnace and possibly the Steam Plant (a new plant could be built closer to Finishing). The new Waste Water plant could remain to treat any ground water if required.

And that folks, is all I know.

Comment edited by mrjanitor on 2012-11-01 12:30:11