MT

By Pierre Bertrand

ArcelorMittal said Thursday that it is seeing signs that market conditions are improving across Europe and that it is gradually bringing idled production capacity back online in Europe.

"We are seeing demand recovering especially because we don't see a repeat of the very significant level of destock that we saw in Q4 which was something very significant," Chief Financial Officer Genuino Christino said during a call to media.

However, Mr. Christino said that though the Luxembourg-based steelmaker is gradually resuming operations in Europe, it isn't doing so at full capacity.

Earlier this week ArcelorMittal in Spain resumed production at reduced capacity at one of its blast furnaces in Asturias which was idled at the end of September due to market conditions.

High energy prices, declining steel prices and overall negative market sentiment led ArcelorMittal to either idle or reduce production capacity across Europe in 2022.

ArcelorMittal has yet to resume production at one of its idled blast furnaces in the south of France, Mr. Christino said, adding that close to 10% of the company's production in Europe remains offline so far in the first quarter of 2023.

"The whole idea here is to try to match production to the level of demand that we are seeing," Mr. Christino said.

ArcelorMittal said in its fourth-quarter result that steel shipments declined to 12.6 metric tons in the quarter, down from 15.8 tons in the same period the prior-year.

However, the company said it expects 2023 global apparent steel consumption, excluding China, to recover by 2% to 3% compared with 2022 and to increase steel shipments by around 5%.

Write to Pierre Bertrand at pierre.bertrand@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2023 06:31 ET (11:31 GMT)

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