Nippon Steel Kimitsu No. 2 blast furnace to be resumed in Oct.

Sep. 17 MetalBiz--Japan Nippon Steel stated on September 16 that the company planned to restart the No. 2 blast furnace of Kimitsu, which holds three blast furnaces. Since the coke-leakage accident of No. 3 blast furnace happened on August 28, it is not operating as usual, it will take a period of time to return to 100% production capacity utilization rate.

ShojiMuneoka, president of Nippon said at the end of June that because Japan demand is unclear, No. 2 blast furnace of Kimitsu will halt production till the end of 2009. But the accident of No. 3 blast furnace has affected the output, and therefore Nippon decided to restart the No. 2 blast furnace.

Since the global financial crisis at the end of 2008, Nippon closed down 2 of 9 blast furnace, in the recent time one blast furnace has been restarted.

With the pick-up of the global economy and steel demand, many steel mills begin to restart the production. The largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal has restarted about 10 blast furnaces in Europe and America. Although the resumed blast furnaces can not operate with full production, it is expected that by the end of 2009, Europe will hold the newly increasing production of 20mln tons, which is concerned by this field whether the market can clear off these production or not.