U.S. Steel confirmed that it will quit shipping steel slabs into Granite City this November — and instead process them in Indiana and Pennsylvania.
"This commercial decision allows U.S. Steel to maintain future flexibility, while maximizing our domestic production footprint," the company said in a statement. "This option avoids challenging product mixes at each facility, impact on customer orders, and extensive cost inefficiencies."
The newly acquired company's acknowledgement on Monday confirms a union memo sent to local steelworkers late last week, which outlined there will be no layoffs at the Metro East steel mill. Instead, the roughly 900 remaining employees will "maintain the facility in case the situation changes and run ancillary facilities," according to the company.
U.S. Steel has opted to process the slabs where they are being produced at the Mon Valley Works just outside Pittsburgh and Gary Works in Gary, Indiana. The company, which is based in Pittsburgh, shut down steelmaking in the Metro East in late 2023.
The company's latest decision comes just a couple of months after the conclusion of the $14 billion sale to the Japanese firm Nippon. Many in and around Granite City believe the Metro East mill has been forgotten in the deal and it could be headed toward closure.
Illinois U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, said Monday the company's decision to quit processing steel in Granite City is exactly why she opposed the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon.
"It makes no sense to me why a profitable mill, which Granite City has been for generations, is ultimately…its operations are fundamentally being changed, which could lead to a reduction in workforce and just the future of the mill itself," Budzinski said.
The second-term Democrat said she believes President Donald Trump failed Granite City with his approval of the deal, which includes veto power for the Trump administration over the closure, idling or sale of the mill prior to June 2027.
"Granite City is going to be hurt by this decision, and so I hope that there could be some flexibility in reversing this," she said.
U.S. Steel is also not any closer to reaching a deal with SunCoke Energy Inc. to sell the blast furnaces.
"We are currently evaluating options around our metallics strategy across our entire footprint," the company said in a statement.
SunCoke, a Chicago-area firm, proposed converting the furnaces into granulators to melt scrap iron to fuel other electric arc furnaces in a deal announced in 2022. It would permanently end steelmaking in Granite City. However, it has since stalled. A SunCoke executive said earlier this summer that his company still hoped to complete the deal.
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