Steel Mills

AHMSA Taking Two-Week Planned Outage on HSM

October 1, 2021

Mexican flat-rolled steelmaker Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA) is taking a planned, two-week outage on its hot strip mill, a company spokesman said.

The outage is underway. Because it was planned, customers should not be impacted, he said.

AHMSA’s hot strip mill has annual capacity of 2.8 million tons per year, according to the Association for Iron and Steel Technology’s 2021 Directory of Iron and Steel Plants.

Separately AHMSA, which is based in the city of Monclova in the northern Mexican province of Coahuila, has not set a date to restart its No. 6 blast furnace, the spokesman said.

The No. 6 furnace, which has daily capacity of 4,500 tons, has been idled since January 2020, according to SMU’s blast furnace status table.

AHMSA is an important supplier to the domestic sheet and plate markets because northern Mexico shares a border with the U.S. Also, AHMSA – like other Mexican steelmakers as well as steelmakers in Canada – can ship to U.S. customers on lead times comparable to those of domestic mills.

By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is managing editor for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He has since 2014 specialized in flat-rolled steel but has previously reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube as well as aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago - where he was involved in launching AMM's daily hot-rolled coil index, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.