Following the major earthquake that hit northeast Japan at the end of last week, Japanese steelmakers Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metals have announced the impacts of the disaster on their plants.
Accordingly, Sumitomo Metals stated on March 13 that it has not suffered any casualties due to the earthquake. However, operations at all the production lines in Sumitomo Metals' Kashima Steelworks have been suspended due to damaged facilities at the plant, including gas holders, coke oven, blast furnaces and port facilities. Fortunately, the fire in the coke gas holder in Kashima was extinguished. Kashima Steelworks normally operates three blast furnaces with an annual crude steel production capacity of 500,000 mt.
On the other hand, Nippon Steel announced on March 14 that some facilities at its Kamaishi Steelworks were flooded by the tsunami and so are out of operation. The port facilities of the Kamaishi Steelworks have been damaged and recovery efforts are now underway.
In the meantime, Nippon Steel's Kimitsu Works has resumed blast furnace operations, which had been temporarily suspended. Following the restart of the iron and steel making processes, Kimitsu Steelworks is now resuming operations of rolling processes.
Finally, Nippon Steel said that all the steelworks had suspended product shipments because of the tsunami. However, since the lifting of the tsunami warning by the Japanese government, all the steelworks except Kamaishi have resumed their shipments.