ArcelorMittal buys 80% of HBI plant in Texas

Global steelmaker ArcelorMittal plans to acquire an 80 percent stake in Voestalpine's hot briquetted iron (HBI) plant in Corpus Christi, Texas.

ArcelorMittal will spend about $680 million to buy an 80% stake in Austrian Voestalpine, with the facility valued at $1 billion, Voestalpine said.

The deal is expected to close in the next two to three months.

The buyout of a majority stake in a 2 million metric tonne HBI plant on the Texas Gulf Coast comes just days after the Austrian steelmaker announced it was selling its stake in the venture.

As part of the deal, Voestalpine signed a long-term agreement with ArcelorMittal for production equal to its 20% share, or 420,000 tons of HBI per year, for its steel mills in Austria.

The remaining 1.6 Mt/y of production will be supplied to third parties under existing supply contracts and ultimately to the ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel (AM/NS) Calvert flat steel joint venture in Alabama. A new electric arc furnace (EAF) under construction here with a capacity of 1.5 million tons/year will be partially fed by HBI from Texas.

The electric arc furnace, located north of Mobile, Alabama, is expected to become operational in the second half of 2023 and can be reached by barge from the HBI facility in Corpus Christi.

The Corpus Christi plant exported 506,000 tons in 2021 and 1.1 million tons in 2020, according to the US Department of Commerce. Austria received 105,000 tons from the plant in 2021 and 99,000 tons in 2020.

ArcelorMittal also said that the HBI plant in Texas, opened in 2016, could be switched from natural gas to hydrogen powered by renewable energy in the future.

In Canada, ArcelorMittal is converting its Dofasco integrated steel plant to a 2.4 Mtpa electric arc furnace and building a new 2 Mtpa direct reduced iron (DRI) plant on site to supply feedstock to the mill. Both are expected to be operational by 2028.