Stelco eyeing a restart of idled steelmaking equipment
Stelco is eyeing a possible expansion of steelmaking activities on currently idled equipment.
The company is looking to see if there's any steelmaking potential for the company to expand its operations, according to a public document filed in the wake of a three-year court-supervised restructuring process.
The company recently raised $230 million in a public offering, which it said would go in part to capital improvements.
There are three "basic oxygen furnace" (BOF) stacks on the Hamilton lands that are not in use for any current steelmaking operations.
While the plan was for the stacks to be demolished, Stelco, under new ownership, halted that process this fall while it takes "time to review the assets and equipment in the BOF stacks area," according to the document.
The restart potential may be one of the reasons for the delay in setting up a land trust called LandCo to sell and lease the vacant Stelco lands with the goal of investing in the company's pensions and benefits funds.
Those lands made headlines last month after city finance head Mike Zegarac told city councillors that hundreds of acres of the waterfront land had been significantly devalued for property tax purposes.
The land trust is a key component of a complicated sale of the Hamilton steelmaking company that was finalized in June. LandCo, a trust made up with provincial and labour representation, is to be the official property owner of the 818 acres of land, with Stelco leasing about one-third of that currently for steel operations.
That signals a potential expansion in steelmaking in Hamilton, which could see Stelco leasing more acres of the land than it currently does and thus leaving less for LandCo to have to remediate and sell off.
A Stelco representative declined to comment on the details outlined in the public document.
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