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“The rod mill [in Peoria] has not been operating [since September] to supply the material needed to produce the downstream products it makes, and so they’ve got a disruption in wire rod supply,” the observer said.
For now, the mill is reduced to shipping “wire and wire products” from its inventory until it can resume operations when it is able to obtain the needed wire rod, the observer said.
In September, Liberty idled wire rod production at its Peoria facility after a breakout and later extended the “temporary shutdown” until March 2025.
Liberty has “financial constraints it is working to resolve as quickly as possible,” the observer said.
A steel buyer, however, said the financial challenges facing Liberty Steel are serious.
“While there have been no official announcements as to Liberty’s status or intentions, it is clear that they are in deep financial trouble, and that it could require, in my opinion, a Chapter 11 type reorganization or selling to a new buyer – or worse, they may not be back up at all,” the steel buyer said.
A source at Liberty Steel, responding to the steel buyer’s concerns, told Fastmarkets, “That’s just somebody’s speculating on what they think. I don’t know what that’s based on. Taking that view just based on our idling of operations is [not warranted]. “
As a further clarification, the observer said, “Liberty’s issues are not a result of anything going in Europe and are separate” from financial challenges facing the London-based parent company GFG Alliance, an industrial conglomerate.
The steel buyer said the company needs to bounce back if is to protect its valuable agricultural products division.
“Liberty, formerly Keystone Steel and Wire, has been a key supplier to big farm-oriented accounts like Tractor Supply, and their iconic Red Brand fence products have a real buyer loyalty, especially in the Midwest,” the steel buyer said.
Even so, the observer was hopeful that wire rod prices will rise in the coming weeks as a result of significant production cutbacks at a number of wire rod producers.
“If prices can rebound a little bit, there’s a lot of capacity from domestic suppliers, but the industry needs to make money doing it,” the observer said.
Last April, low wire rod prices prompted Liberty Steel to idle wire rod production at its Georgetown, South Carolina, facility.
On October 21, Liberty Steel sold off its engineered wire products (EWP) division to Insteel Industries of Mount Airy, North Carolina, for $70 million, according to a release from Insteel.
The sale of EWP has subsequently shut down all manufacturing operations at the Georgetown plant in October as a result of Insteel acquiring the factory’s machinery used to make wire and wire products.
The City of Georgetown has maintained that if Liberty’s Georgetown plant operations remain shut down for more than a year from the day its operations were idled on October 11, it has the right under its Redevelopment District statutes to withdraw the industrial zoning of the waterfront property and prevent Liberty from resuming any manufacturing activity at the site.
Last month, Insteel shut down operations at its Warren, Ohio, EWP facility, which it acquired from Liberty, and moved equipment from that facility to its operations in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.