ThyssenKrupp Starts Brazilian Blast Furnace

The Germany-based company ThyssenKrupp has announced that it started its second blast furnace at its ThyssenKrupp CSA mill in Santa Cruz, Brazil, Dec. 16, 2010, five months after it started the first furnace at the complex. The first furnace is presently producing more than 6,500 metric tons of hot metal per day, close to full capacity, the company says.

“I expect the ramp-up of our second blast furnace to be just as successful, and that next fiscal year the plant will be able to operate at its full capacity,” says Edwin Eichler, ThyssenKrupp AG executive board member responsible for the materials division. “This further milestone in our forward strategy will allow us to reach our objective of generating a profit in the Steel Americas business area in 2012/2013.”

According to ThyssenKrupp, with an investment budget of €5.2 billion (US$6.82 billion), ThyssenKrupp’s Brazilian integrated iron and steel mill is the biggest industrial investment project in Brazil in the past 10 years and the first major steel mill to be built in the country since the mid-1980s.

Vale, the Brazilian iron ore producer, holds a 26.87 percent share in ThyssenKrupp CSA’s Brazilian steel mill complex. The project includes the construction of a complex with its own port terminal for importing coal and exporting steel slabs, raw material handling facilities, a coke plant, sinter plant, two blast furnaces, a BOF (basic oxygen furnace) melt shop and a power plant.

“With the startup of the plant in Alabama and the launch of the steel mill in Brazil in the summer, ThyssenKrupp is entering a new dimension of its history,” said Ekkehard Schulz, CEO of ThyssenKrupp AG, at the opening ceremony at Thyssen Krupp’s new facility in Calvert, Ala. “These two projects are the cornerstones of our transatlantic growth strategy: We plan to achieve profitable growth in international markets of the future. That’s why the investments in our plants in the United States and Brazil are true investments in the future.”