Blast furnace No. 2 at German steelmaker ThyssunKrupp's ThyssenKrupp CSA steel mill in Santa Cruz in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro was fired up on schedule and without problems on December 16, five months after the firing of blast furnace No. 1 in July this year.
Blast furnace No. 1 now produces over 6,500 metric tons of top-quality hot metal per day, close to its full capacity. The second furnace is expected to reach full capacity at the end of the next fiscal year.
In addition to blast furnace No. 1, two 330 mt converters have been in operation since early September and early November. The first slab was produced on September 7.
With an investment budget of €5.2 billion, the new integrated iron and steel mill built by ThyssenKrupp in the state of Rio de Janeiro is the biggest industrial investment project in Brazil in the past ten years and the first major steel mill to be built in the country since the mid-1980s, ThyssenKrupp said. The Brazilian iron ore producer Vale holds a share of 26.87 percent in the subsidiary ThyssenKrupp CSA Siderúrgica do Atlântico.