Liberty Liege will restart production Feb. 15 at the 200,000 mt/year packaging line at its Tilleur site in Belgium, the company said Feb, 14.

The restart follows three months of maintenance work to ensure the line was ready, while “discussions are continuing with a view to restarting the production of galvanized steel at Liberty Liège’s site at Flémalle in the near future,” said Liberty, referring to its other Belgium site, in a statement.

A company spokesperson told S&P Global Platts the capacity remained as outlined at circa-200,000 mt/year and as it was only just restarting, it was too early to forecast expectations for the year, he said.

The Tilleur packaging line has been impacted by an intermittent disruption in raw material supplies and the coronavirus pandemic.

“I would like to highlight the important work carried out by all the Liberty teams to achieve this result,” Managing Director Olivier Lacroix said in the statement. “We are pursuing our action plan to restart the galvanizing activities at the Flémalle site as soon as possible."

In addition to Tilleur and Flémalle, Liberty Liege also has a site in Dudelange, Luxemburg.

The group's owner, GFG Alliance, has provided more than Eur40 million ($47 million) in funding to Liberty Liège since its acquisition from ArcelorMittal in July 2019. But its investment plans were initially undermined by a weak steel market in 2019, before the business was negatively impacted by the pandemic. The situation at Liège was then exacerbated by the collapse of Greensill Capital, GFG Alliance's main financier back in March 2021.