International Steel Mills
April 26, 2016
CSN (Brazil) Loses Lone Blast Furnace, Export Orders in Jeopardy
Written by John Packard
Earlier today CSN began informing their U.S. customers importing flat rolled steel from them that there has been an accident at their #3 blast furnace in Brazil. The blast furnace, which was just coming back into operation after a 10-day scheduled maintenance outage, will now be down for an “undetermined” amount of time.
SMU sources have identified the problem as a “breakout” which is a very serious event. We spoke with one of our CSN sources who advised us that the mill has two furnaces: number 3,which is the one that just went down and number 2 which is a 2 million metric ton a year furnace that is currently idle and it would take up to 90 days to bring the #2 furnace back online. The hope is the mill will be able to repair the #3 furnace in less time. But, it is too early to tell (see photo at left of the breakout of the CSN furnace as published in Odia Rio).
