U.S. Steel will restart its Gary Tin Mill at the Gary Works facility in early 2027 if customer interest remains sustainable.
The company estimates that it will cost between $15 million and $20 million to restart the mill. About 225 jobs will be needed to support the operations there.
“Customers are increasingly focused on securing dependable domestic supply they can count on over the long term,” said U. S. Steel President and Chief Executive Officer David Burritt, in a press release. “Restarting the Gary Tin Mill positions us to serve that demand, support domestic manufacturing, and strengthen critical U.S. supply chains — including those that help support American farmers and food producers — provided trade is fair and enforced.”
The announcement came after U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers filed antidumping duty petitions April 9. Anti-dumping is “when a foreign producer or exporter sells a product in the United States at a price that is below ‘normal value,'” according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
U.S. Steel idled most of its tin operation in 2022 and laid off 244 workers.
The company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development that it shut down the division because of “market conditions which were out of the company’s control, including the continuing reduced demand for the company’s tin products and significantly increased tin mill imports.”
Tin has not been mined in the U.S. since 1993, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report in January 2022. It is mostly used in chemicals. About 18,000 tons of tin from scrap were recycled in 2021. Refined tin comes from Indonesia, Peru, Malaysia, Bolivia, among others. Waste and scrap tin comes from Canada.
Tin prices saw a dramatic increase from 2021 through mid-2022, then steadily have risen to new highs in 2026, according to Trading Economics. The price of tin as of April 15 was $22.50 a pound, according to MiningiDEAS.com.
Nippon Steel Corp. and its U.S. subsidiary Nippon Steel North America and U.S. Steel finalized a $15 billion partnership in June 2025. Nippon Steel promised to make $11 billion in investments in U.S. Steel by 2028, including $3.1 billion in Gary Works upgrades. It was scheduled to begin relining its largest blast furnace at the Gary Works steel mill in 2026, according to Burritt.
Gary Works has the capability to make 7.5 million net tons of steel annually. The manufacturing plant on the south shore of Lake Michigan makes sheet products and coils. Construction began on the facility in 1906, according to the Indiana Historical Society.
Along with its four Gary Works blast furnaces, U.S. Steel operates two blast furnaces at its Edgar Thomson plant in the Mon Valley Works in southwestern Pennsylvania.
