Historically it was the most expensive approach thanks to the high cost of electricity and higher initial capital. Here is a pretty easy to skim paper on the cost breakdown from 1980: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/bk-1980-0116.ch001

The approach is quite competitive technologically and the efficiency is there but the problem is electric cost. Thankfully renewables are bringing that cost down so some areas with very cheap electric could support such manufacturing.