Tata’s refurbished Blast Furnace 6 should have been running already, but that will take some time. The main contractor of the renovation would not have done his job properly. Now the steel factory has to make do with only one instead of two blast furnaces for the time being.
There are two Hoogovens on the site, numbered 6 and 7. They are an important part of the steelmaking process: it is not for nothing that the company took its name from the two ovens for many years. In it, iron ore is heated with coal and melted into pig iron.
According to the greening plan, Hoogoven 7 will disappear in about five years, and the slightly smaller Hoogoven 6 in about fifteen years. Get there new furnaces in return. They work according to new techniques.
Burning coal is therefore a thing of the past: the new ovens will first run on natural gas and hopefully soon after that on hydrogen. This reduces CO₂ emissions to almost zero.
Not done yet
In order to be able to bridge those fifteen years properly, Hoogoven 6 was on for the last time this year a thorough renovation please. The last time that happened was 38 years ago, in 1985.
A Blast Furnace never actually stands still, because switching it on and off costs a lot of energy and money. “This renovation costs tens of millions,” Tata employee Frank Kerkhoven explained to NH more than two months ago in the video below. That work should be done now, but it is not.
Text continues below the video.
“Tata Steel has received permission from us to extend the renovation work by 100 days,” says the North Sea Canal Area Environment Agency (ODNZKG).
According to ODNZKG, Tata Steel would have put the Spanish company Duro Felguera aside as a main contractor “a few weeks ago”. Whether that is so, Tata leaves steel in the middle. According to Tata, the company is still doing work on site.
There are rumors that work on Blast Furnace 6 has come to a complete standstill, but that is not true, say both Tata Stitch and ODNZKG. The latter: “We are on site twice a week to oversee the renovation, and work is underway.”
Kooks
Tata Steel says it has come up with a solution to the problems caused by the delay. “Tata Steel is an integrated company. This means that all factories in IJmuiden are in proportion to each other: one factory produces for the other. In the run-up to the shutdown of Hoogoven 6, for example, more steel slabs were produced.”
The excess coke (processed coal, ed.) cannot enter Blast Furnace 6 and will be shipped. “The two coke plants cannot be shut down or they will be seriously damaged. The surplus coke we currently have is now being used by our sister company in Port Talbot in Wales. This means they need to buy less coke externally.”
The IJmuiden company is unhappy with the delay: “Logically, we would rather put our blast furnace back into operation yesterday than today.”