The United Steelworkers (USW) union will negotiate the terms of its labor agreement for a steel mill in Granite City, Illinois, with the potential buyer of the facility.
The union announced the move on 10 July as it explained to its membership the process for contract negotiations with integrated steelmaker US Steel, which began on 11 July.
US Steel currently runs the Granite City works, which has one active and one idled blast furnace. The steel mill, which has a capacity of 2.8mn short tons (st)/yr of raw steel production, may be sold to SunCoke Energy for conversion to pig iron production to serve US Steel's growing fleet of scrap-based electric arc furnace (EAF) minimills.
By the second half of 2024, SunCoke would build a 2mn st/yr pig iron production plant at the mill, which is located across the river from St Louis, Missouri.
The proposed deal is subject to approval by US Steel's board of directors and regulators.
Granite City was brought back online in 2018 as steel prices rose after then-president Donald Trump imposed 25pc Section 232 tariffs on steel imports into the US. Those tariffs were then selectively removed by Trump later in his administration, and have been further rolled back under President Joe Biden.
Many in the steel industry believe that Granite City would eventually be shut back down by US Steel when steel prices — which have had a record run during the Covid-19 pandemic — eventually come down.
