Acciai Speciali Terni (AST), a stainless steel manufacturer in Italy, announced that it has decided to suspend the production and operations of all rolling lines at its plant in central Italy for a week from May 25 due to low demand, the second time to suspend production this month.

At the BIR conference in Amsterdam, major stainless steel market regions were forecasted to have a downturn, except the Middle East was expected to grow.

AST has two electric arc furnaces, with a total annual production capacity of 1.4 million tons. The company’s crude steel output amounted to 1 million tons in 2022.