Algoma to temporarily shut down blast furnace in ’07

Ontario-based steelmaker Algoma Steel has announced that it will shut down its blast furnace for a period of 25 days in mid-2007. During this time, the company will perform maintenance on the furnace lining in order to extend the blast furnace reline to 2010 or later. The company is still in the process of assessing the costs related to the outage of its only blast furnace, which has a production capacity of approximately 2.8 million net tons of raw steel per year.