Published by: Robert England<>
10 Mar 2025 @ 22:09 UTC

Optimus Steel is taking a two-week maintenance outage from March 31 to April 13 at its Beaumont, Texas facility, a company source told Fastmarkets on Monday March 10.
Optimus Steel has a rolling capacity of 1.6 million tons as a result of doubling its capacity in steps since 2021, giving the mill two separate rolling mills — one for wire rod and the other for rebar production.
The mill produces wire rod, coiled rebar and billet for the automotive, building and infrastructure, energy steel packaging, tools and machinery, and transport industries.
Fastmarkets’ monthly price assessment for steel wire rod (low carbon) industrial quality, fob mill US was $45-50 per hundredweight ($900-1,000 per short ton) on February 18, up by 2.15% from $44-49 per cwt on January 21 and December 17.
Fastmarkets assessed the weekly price of steel reinforcing bar (rebar), fob mill US at $39 per cwt ($780 per ton) on March 5, unchanged from the prior three weeks.
US wire rod mills announced a transaction price increase of $70 per ton on wire rod on February 14 in response to an increase of $50 per gross ton in the cost of steel scrap shredded auto scrap, consumer buying price, delivered mill Chicago from January to February.