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JOHANNESBURG Jan 13 (Reuters) – ArcelorMittal South
Africa, a unit of the world’s biggest steelmaker
, resumed full production at its Newcastle plant that
was hit by a furnace failure last year, the company said on
Friday.
The furnace failure had impacted an already subdued outlook
for the company and ArcelorMittal had to source steel from
external sources to minimise the impact on its customers.
Higher electricity, raw material costs and weaker sales
pushed the company into a third-quarter loss, but the steelmaker
had forecast some improvement for the last three months of last
year.
“The Newcastle plant resumed full production on Dec. 9,
2011. The company is working hard to eliminate the sales backlog
as soon as possible,” the company said.
The steelmaker said the insurance claim was still estimated
at 1.1 billion rand ($136.24 million).
“After a deductible amount of 160 million rand was taken
into account the company received an interim payment of 490
million rand in December,” it added.
Shares in the company were down 0.80 percent at 67.90 rand
by 1457 GMT, compared with a 0.39 percent fall in the JSE Top-40
index of blue chip companies.
($1 = 8.0743 South African rand)
(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak)
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