Steel Dynamics (SDI) announced that it has notified its customers for cold rolled, galvanised and painted sheet products that, until it can make alternative hydrogen gas supply arrangements, it is suspending order entry for these hydrogen gas-dependent, value-added products.
The company was informed by Air Products, its hydrogen gas supplier, that it would be unable to meet its immediate supply commitments to SDI due to the temporary outage of its New Orleans hydrogen gas production facility in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the planned two-month shut down of its Sarnia, Ontario plant as a result of feedstock curtailment by Nova Chemicals.
Keith Busse, SDI’s president and CEO, said: “While we have some on-hand supply and have already arranged for some alternative sources of hydrogen gas, we wanted to inform our customers of the potential problem as soon as possible.
“We plan to adjust our product mix to optimise our existing supply of hydrogen gas, taking into account critical needs. However, although we hope that there will be only minimal impact, there could be some loss of value-added margin over this period of time.”
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