US Steel to resume steel production at Illinois plant shut 2 years ago
[December 06, 2025]
By MARC LEVY
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — U.S. Steel said it will resume making steel slabs
at its Granite City Works plant in Illinois as demand rebounds.
The company shut down the last blast furnace there in 2023, and it even
moved to wind down its steel processing mill there in September.
However, it reversed its stance on the processing mill, under pressure
from the White House, and now says it is going a step further by
resuming steel making by reopening the blast furnace it idled two years
ago amid strikes by the United Auto Workers.
U.S. Steel on Thursday cited “customer demand” in beginning the process
of restarting a blast furnace at the plant in Southern Illinois, just
across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.
“After several months of carefully analyzing customer demand, we made
the decision to restart a blast furnace,” CEO David Burritt said a
statement. “Steel remains a highly competitive and highly cyclical
industry, but we are confident in our ability to safely and profitably
operate the mill to meet 2026 demand."
The Pittsburgh company expects to resume steel production in the first
half of next year after it hires and trains workers and gets equipment
in safe working order. It will need to hire 400 of the 500 workers
necessary to operate the plant, the company said.
Currently, there are 12 operating blast furnaces in the U.S., the
American Iron and Steel Institute said, down from about 140 in the 1970s
before foreign competition devastated the American steel industry.
Nobody in the U.S. has opened a new blast furnace in decades.
But economic conditions in the industry have improved the last few
years.
Analysts say a robust U.S. steel market has been strengthened by tariffs
under President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden.
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In this June 28, 2018 photo, senior melt operator Randy Feltmeyer
watches a giant ladle as it backs away after pouring its contents of
red-hot iron into a vessel in the basic oxygen furnace as part of
the process of producing steel at the U.S. Steel Granite City Works
facility in Granite City, Ill. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
In addition, rebounding automaking and construction are helping, the
institute said.
The institute reported that domestic steel mills in October shipped
7.7 million net tons, a 9% percent increase over the same month a
year ago. Year-to-date shipments through October were up 5% over the
same period in 2024, it said.
The decision by U.S. Steel, comes less than six months after
Japan-based Nippon Steel sealed a deal with Trump to buy the iconic
American steelmaker for $14.9 billion.
To resolve national security objections to the acquisition, Nippon
Steel agreed to give the federal government a say in certain company
decisions involving domestic steel production, including over
closing or idling U.S. Steel’s plants.
It also pledged to invest some $14 billion in steel production in
the U.S., including building a new electric furnace.
Under the national security agreement, protections expire in 2027
for Granite City Works, but last until 2035 for U.S. Steel’s other
facilities.
Granite City Works makes rolls of sheet steel for the construction,
container, pipe and automotive industries.
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