On July 21, the South Korean steel giant POSCO restarted its improved No. 4 blast furnace in the southwestern city of Gwangyang in line with shrinking inventories and increasing global demand, reports say.
The blast furnace No.4 was stopped in February this year, due to the decrease in demand for steel and for renovation purposes. As a result of the five month-long renovation the annual production capacity of the blast furnace has been increased to 5.5 million metric tons from 3.8 million metric tons, enough to the cover annual consumption of the South Korean carmakers. Thus, the renovated blast furnace now has the largest daily crude production capacity of any blast furnace in the world, at more than 14,000 metric tons of steel per day.
"The successful relining of the No. 4 furnace once again proves POSCO's technological prowess," POSCO CEO Chung Joon-yang said at the furnace commissioning ceremony. Company officials highlighted that the renovation was completed using only domestic technology.
In December 2008, the company had cut its output for the first time in its 41-year history.
POSCO has raised its 2009 production target by 6.4 percent, from 28 million tons to 29.8 million tons, expecting that demand from carmakers and shipbuilders will rise. Last year, the company produced 33.1 million metric tons of steel.
As Steelorbis previously reported, the company's net profit dropped by 71 percent to KRW 431 billion (US$328 million) in the second quarter of 2009 compared to KRW 1.48 trillion (US$1,188 billion) in the year-ago period, due to weak demand and falling steel prices.