Qatar Steel is eyeing a resumption of its mothballed plants after resuming rebar production for the export market in December. Exports now account for 38.5% of rebar production, the firm says.

The steelmaker’s rolling mill 1 (RM-1) remains idled since the second quarter of 2020. However, the unit has started the scheduled major repair of the billet reheating furnace’s lower heating zone hearth. This will replace around 40% of the refractories and 20% of the body’s steel shell.

“Our mid-term target is to return our mothballed facilities to full production,” Qatar Steel chief executive Abdulrahman Ali Al-Abdulla says in the firm’s latest newsletter monitored by Kallanish. “We shall continue serving the local market to support the completion of the infrastructure projects related to FIFA 2022 and Qatar Vision 2030; as well as export opportunities and product diversification as part of our strategies.”

Towards the end of 2020 Qatar Steel came storming back onto the Asian export market following its public exit at the start of Q2 due to reduced margins internationally (see Kallanish passim).

Since the plant mothballing Qatar Steel’s operational capacity has been resized to 800,000 tonnes/year of rebar, 900,000 t/y of billet and 600,000 t/y of direct reduced iron/hot-briquetted iron.

The firm’s rebar sales dropped 41% on-year in 2020 to 1.26 million tonnes, while billet sales totalled 233,000t versus 691,000t in 2019. Asia took a 15% share in total 2020 revenue versus 45% in 2019.