Eastern Railroad Discussion > US Steel Facility in Lorain, OH to close

An article in the 4/13/20 Bloomberg BusinessWeek mentions several steel facilities are closing due to the business downturn.  The Lorain facility will close in May.  Other impacted sites include ArcelorMittal shutting down a blast furnace at Indiana Harbor and another at the Dofasco plant in Hamilton, ON.  US Steel is also closing a blast furnace in Granite City, IL, which is just outside of St. Louis.  As far as I can tell all plants are rail served.

Tough time for the steel industry with the downturns in demand for oilfield equipment and auto manufacturing.

Didn’t they just reopen Granite City?

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Steel mill in Pueblo, CO was working last week

The trade group says monthly production is down. Imports are down, too

Statistics:
https://www.steel.org/industry-data

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howeld Wrote:
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> Didn’t they just reopen Granite City?
>

There are two blast furnaces at Granite City.  Sounds like they will idle one of them.  And you are remembering correctly-- the second furnace was restarted in 2018, which seems like yesterday at this point.

And on the upshot, U.S. Steel is resuming construction of the Electric Arc Furnace at its Fairfield, AL works:

https://www.al.com/business/2019/02/us-steel-restarting-fairfield-furnace-adding-150-jobs.html

Watco's Birmingham Terminal Railway will benefit from this, along with CSX and NS.
 

What type of steel does Lorain make?  Once upon a time it made pipe, don't know if it still does.  As mentioned earlier, the demand for pipe is not great at present.

The demise of some higher cost frackers in North Dakota will directly impact the oil trains.

Many East coast refineries were set up to receive crude from Angola, the Persian Gulf, etc

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In addition to the aforementioned bloodbath in the energy sector; consider also that just about every automobile manufacturing plant in the US and Canada has shut down and that demand for new rail cars and locomotives is suddenly nonexistent; it’s no surprise the steel industry is feeling some pain.

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Don't forget that USS' massive Great Lakes Works just shut their hot end indefinitely, and USS will also idle another BF at Gary, while ArcelorMittal is shutting down one of two BFs at its Cleveland Works. AK Steel also shut down a couple of mills. Like it was mentioned, tough times all around, and some of this capacity may not come back, but hope is that once demand resumes there will be need for all of it to come back, politics aside. And if help is being given out, it seems fair to spread it around evenly for everyone to benefit. Of course, that's never how it plays out... JG

The closing of the steel mills have had plenty of negative affects on the communities and surrounding areas where they are-crime, poverty. Many of those examples are in Ohio-Youngstown is a good example. The closing of the steel mills is affecting trains as well but probably not as much as crime. Today, plenty of freight trains pass through Lorain and many of the other former steel mill communities as those routes are essential from the Midwest to the Northeast.

CSX had a plan to bring ore pellets from a plant at Remington, IN to the mills in Lorain.  The plant in Remington hardly got open, and then closed for lack of demand. 

Potential routing from Remington to Lorain was via Indianapolis.  CSX put some new ties into the CL&W sub north of Grafton up to LOrain, but obviously that expense was not needed.  

Anyone want to buy the CL&W sub; CSX will like accept offers.  

MEKoch Wrote:
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> CSX had a plan to bring ore pellets from a plant
> at Remington, IN to the mills in Lorain.  The
> plant in Remington hardly got open, and then
> closed for lack of demand. 
>
> Potential routing from Remington to Lorain was via
> Indianapolis.  CSX put some new ties into the
> CL&W sub north of Grafton up to LOrain, but
> obviously that expense was not needed.  

Sorry but the pellet plant was in Reynolds, IN, and while in operation shipped pellets to an AK Steel plant in Middletown, OH, via CSX, using the Monon on its route to Indy...

And yes, the plant was shut down a couple years ago after being in operation for only about a year.
  

calumet Wrote:
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> MEKoch Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > CSX had a plan to bring ore pellets from a
> plant
> > at Remington, IN to the mills in Lorain.  The
> > plant in Remington hardly got open, and then
> > closed for lack of demand. 
> >
> > Potential routing from Remington to Lorain was
> via
> > Indianapolis.  CSX put some new ties into the
> > CL&W sub north of Grafton up to LOrain, but
> > obviously that expense was not needed.  
>
> Sorry but the pellet plant was in Reynolds, IN,
> and while in operation shipped pellets to an AK
> Steel plant in Middletown, OH, via CSX, using the
> Monon on its route to Indy...
>
> And yes, the plant was shut down a couple years
> ago after being in operation for only about a
> year.
>   

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