Last night, U.S. Steel (X) said it would re-start production at its shuttered Granite City plant. Macquarie’s Aldo Mazzaferro considers the implications:
Despite the lack of volume impact, we think this is a smart move strategically since it allows US Steel to perform the needed maintenance and upgrading on its three other major hot strip mill operations without losing shipping volume to customers for the most part.
The company plans to ship semi-finished slabs to Granite City to be reheated and rolled into hot rolled sheet product. We think the slabs will originate variously at the plants that have the strip mills under repair.
