The Luxembourg steelmaker ArcelorMittal announced it had renewed a contract with Mexico’s state-owned power utility organization CFE worth $2.7 billion that will see CFE supply the company with natural gas for the next ten years.
According to Reuters, ArcelorMittal said that the contract would provide its operations in Lazaro Cardenas with gas from Waha, Texas.
The world’s 197th biggest company in 2022, based on a Fortune Global 500 ranking, currently produces rods, slabs, bar stock and wire at its Lazaro Cardenas facility, where it also has a port concession for importing and exporting of goods.
ArcelorMittal said that it shipped out 2.5 million metric tons of steel from its North American venues during the third quarter of 2023.
In November, the CEO of ArcelorMittal’s competitor (Ternium) argued that Mexico needed to drastically improve its energy investment initiatives in order to stave off bottlenecks within the private steel industry.
ArcelorMittal said that it was commissioning its $38.47 million plant in Belgium to convert waste wood into a bio-coal that will be used in the blast furnace of its Gent-based steelmaking site just one day before the CFE deal was announced. ArcelorMittal said that this initiative will cut the company’s annual carbon emissions from the plant by 112,500 tons, while reducing the use of fossil coal in the blast furnace.
