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Johannesburg - ArcelorMittal SA [JSE:ACL] , a unit of the world’s top steelmaker, secured around 240 000 tonnes of steel to boost supplies to its customers after a furnace failure at its Newcastle plant temporarily cut output.
The company said last month that the failure would result in a loss of 400 000 tonnes in output and the blast furnace would take about three months to repair.
The steelmaker expects the externally-sourced steel to be supplied to the market from the middle of October.
“This will go a long way towards meeting the domestic needs for commercial grade long steel products such as rebar,” it said in a statement.
While some products have been sourced domestically, the bulk of the material has been secured from other ArcelorMittal mills.
The furnace failure is likely to impact an already subdued outlook for the company.
Higher input costs and a strong rand led to a 63% drop in the company’s first-half profit and the steelmaker forecast a difficult third-quarter, partially due to a recent strike over wages and a planned maintenance shutdown at one of its plants.
The company said in a separate statement that from October prices for long steel products would increase by between R300 and R600 a tonne, depending on product and grade.
Shares in the company were down 1.83% at R58.61 by 11:24, compared with a 1.85% drop in Johannesburg’s Top-40 blue chip index.
