Nippon Steel to Expand Kimitsu’s No.2 BF, to Build Nagoya’s New Coke Oven

Nippon Steel announced on Thursday the firm decided around 100 billion yen investment at Kimitsu and Nagoya works to improve competitiveness of the steel source. The firm relines and expands No.2 blast furnace at Kimitsu and replaces No.3 coke oven into SCOPE21 type of energy efficient new oven at Nagoya. The vice president Keisuke Kuroki said the firm secures ability to increase the production in order to follow growing demand around Japan while the firm tries to improve the cost competitiveness against Asian rivals with new facilities.

The firm relines No.2 blast furnace at Kimitsu, which operates for 15 years, and expands the furnace from current 3,273 cubic meters of inner capacity to around 4,500 cubic meters by April-June 2012 for around 40 billion yen. The firm expands the unconsolidated raw steel output capacity from annual 35 million tonnes to 35.7 million tonnes.

The firm builds SCOPE21 type of No.5 coke oven at Nagoya works for around 60 billion yen as Oita works’ No.5 coke oven. The firm starts the ground works by March 2011 starting the oven with annual 1 million tonnes of output capacity in March 2013. With the energy saving facility, the firm expects the carbon dioxide emission will decrease by 100,000-200,000 tonnes per year.

The firm also tries to improve the ability to use lower grade raw materials and reduce reducing agent consumption for better cost competitiveness through the companywide effort. With the cost competitiveness, the firm targets world No.1 supplier of high grade steel products.