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Corus to Rebuild Blast Furnace in Wales
Aug. 17, 2010 Corus plans to invest £185 million into the No. 4 Blast Furnace at Port Talbot steelworks. The furnace will undergo a rebuild, starting in July 2012, that will equip it with technology to improve its safety, environmental performance, and reliability.
The project will also balance the iron and steel making capacities at Port Talbot, Corus noted, increasing the capacity of the two blast furnaces by up to 400,000 tonnes per year.
Kirby Adams, Corus Managing Director and CEO of Tata Steel Europe, said: “This investment is a major step in achieving Tata Steel’s ambition to position Port Talbot as a producer of high-quality strip products on a global scale and an internationally competitive cost base.
“As a result of this project the Port Talbot works and our downstream supply chain will be able in the coming decades to continue improving the quality of products and services provided to their UK and overseas strip product customers.”
Corus Chief Operating Officer Karl-Ulrich Köhler said: “This is a major investment designed to provide Port Talbot No. 4 with a long new campaign life of 20 years. The furnace’s energy efficiency and productivity will also be improved. Following this project and the rebuilding a few years ago of the No. 5 Blast Furnace, Port Talbot will be equipped with two world-class iron making facilities.”
Corus employs about 7000 people in Wales, around 5000 of whom are employed in the integrated steelworks business Corus Strip Products UK, based at Port Talbot steelworks and also at the Llanwern steelworks in Newport, South Wales. This business produces strip products for diverse markets and has the annual capacity to produce about 5 million tonnes of steel.
Corus is Europe's second largest steel producer. With main steelmaking operations primarily in the U.K. and the Netherlands, Corus supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, mechanical engineering, and other markets worldwide. It is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, one of the world’s top 10 steel producers. The combined enterprise has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 80,000 employees across four continents.