Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine has announced that it has restarted the second blast furnace at its Donawitz plant “in response to the current level of orders in the long steel sector." The blast furnace, which was under repair since last summer, has an annual production capacity of around 750,000 mt of pig iron. The total capacity of the plant is approximately 1.5 million mt.
The company pointed out that all five of its blast furnaces are currently active, including those in Linz, with a total capacity of around 5 million mt of pig iron. The performance of the Railway Systems business unit of Voestalpine's Metal Engineering Division "has remained stable even during the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus," while "now the wire and seamless tubes segments, both hit last year by the Covid-related slump in demand from the automotive and oil and gas industries, are also showing a slight improvement in capacity utilization," the company said. Nevertheless, "due to the coronavirus pandemic and continued lockdown measures in many countries, the economic outlook for the coming months remains extremely uncertain," Voestalpine specified.