Usiminas Cubatão steel plant

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Usiminas Cubatão steel plant (Usina Usiminas Cubatão), also known as Cosipa - Companhia Siderúrgica Paulista (predecessor), is a steel plant in Cubatão, São Paulo, Brazil that operates blast furnace (BF) and basic oxygen furnace (BOF) technology.

Location

The map below shows the exact location of the plant in Cubatão, São Paulo, Brazil:

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• Location: Rod. Cônego Domênico Rangoni, S/N, Jardim das Industrias, Cubatão, Sao Paulo, 11573-900, Brazil
• Coordinates (WGS 84): -23.863092, -46.376294 (exact)

Background

Usiminas (Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais SA) is Brazil's leading producer of flat steel, with access to 2.6 billion tons of iron ore reserves. The company began steel making operations in 1962 at its Usiminas Ipatinga steel plant in the mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais and subsequently acquired the Cubatão plant in 1993. The company produces uncoated flat steel (plates, thick plates, hot and cold rolled), with customers in the railway, automotive, naval, agricultural, and civil construction sectors, among others.

The Cubatão steel plant traces its origins to 1953, when a group of Brazilian engineers founded COSIPA (Companhia Siderúrgica Paulista) with the goal of constructing a São Paulo-based steel plant to rival the thriving new Presidente Vargas Steelworks in Volta Redonda. The project was initially launched with private capital, but its ambitious scope led to significant delays, and government investment was eventually required to ensure the plant's completion in December 1963. State ownership of the project rose from 58% in 1961 to 98.6% in 1970.

The COSIPA plant grew steadily over its first three decades of operation, opening its own maritime terminal in 1969 and increasing production capacity from an initial level of 600,000 tpa in 1965 to 3.9 million tpa with the inauguration of the plant's second blast furnace in 1976.

On August 20, 1993 COSIPA was privatized via an auction on the São Paulo Stock Exchange (BOVESPA), with a group of investors led by Usiminas taking control of the company. The new owners embarked on a campaign to modernize the plant, refurbishing blast furnace #2 and adding a new steel making facility in 2001 and taking several other measures to improve the plant's efficiency over the next decade.

Amidst Brazil's financial crisis in October 2015, Usiminas announced that it was halting steel production at the Cubatão plant, with closure of the plant's two blast furnaces, coke plant and sintering plant. The thousands of resulting layoffs significantly impacted the local economy; however, operations continued at the plant's hot rolling and cold rolling lines, and at the hot strip mill.

In April 2019, citing continued weakness in the Brazilian economy, Usiminas announced that steel production at the Cubatão plant would not resume until 2022 at the earliest. Subsequent reporting from Reuters in February 2020 indicated that steelmaking was unlikely to resume before 2024. In April 2020, operations at the plant's rolling mill were also suspended after Covid-19 shut down Brazil's auto-making industry, prompting a precipitous dropoff in demand for finished steel.

In August 2022, Usiminas's board president Sergio Leite de Andrade confirmed that the company planned to resume crude steel production at the Cubatão plant, but he offered no target date, and noted that the eventual resumption of operations would be contingent upon adoption of new carbon neutral technology at the plant, such as biochar-based self-reduction pellets.

Usiminas's 2022 annual sustainability report, released in July 2023, attributed the company's entire 2022 crude steel production (2.7 million tonnes) to Usiminas's Ipatinga plant, implying that the Cubatão plant did not produce any crude steel in 2022. As of Q2 2023, Ipatinga still appeared to be the only Usiminas unit producing crude steel, with the Cubatão plant exclusively focused on finished steel production.

As of December 2023, the Cubatão plant did not appear to have resumed steelmaking operations.

When steelmaking operations start up again, Cubatão's output is initially projected to be between 1 and 1.2 million tonnes per annum, well shy of its 4 million tpa capacity.

Plant Details

Table 1: General Plant Details

Start date	Idled date	Workforce size
1963	2016	1200

Table 2: Ownership and Parent Company Information

Parent company	Parent company PermID	Parent company GEM ID	Owner	Owner company PermID	Owner company GEM ID
Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais SA	4295859856	E100000130691	Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais SA	4295859856	E100000130691

Table 3: Process and Products

Steel product category	Steel products	Steel sector end users	ISO 14001	ISO 50001	Responsible steel	Main production equipment
finished rolled	coil, sheet, plate	automotive, building and infrastructure, energy, tools and machinery, transport	2023-08-10	unknown	unknown	BF; BOF

Table 4: Plant-level Crude Steel Production Capacities (thousand tonnes per annum)

¹Please see our Frequently Asked Questions page for an explanation of the different capacity operating statuses.

Capacity operating status1	Basic oxygen furnace steelmaking capacity	Nominal crude steel capacity (total)
mothballed	4500	4500

Table 5: Plant-level Crude Iron Production Capacities (thousand tonnes per annum)

¹Please see our Frequently Asked Questions page for an explanation of the different capacity operating statuses.

Capacity operating status1	Blast furnace capacity	Nominal iron capacity (total)
mothballed	4500	4500

Table 6: Upstream Products Production Capacities (thousand tonnes per annum)

Ferronickel	Sinter	Coke	Pellets
NF	3000	833	NF

Unit Details

Table 7: Blast Furnace Details

Unit name	Status	Start date	Current size	Current capacity (ttpa)	Decarbonization technology	Most recent relining
BF 1	mothballed	1965	1820.0	1600	unknown	2001-01
BF 2	mothballed	1976	3365.0	2900	unknown	2001-10

Table 8: Basic Oxygen Furnace Details

Unit name	Status	Current capacity (ttpa)
unknown BOF (1)	mothballed	1500
unknown BOF (2)	mothballed	1500
unknown BOF (3)	mothballed	1500

Articles and Resources

Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of steel power plants, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Iron and Steel Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.

Resources

• Company website
• Wikipedia