Salzgitter started repairing blast furnace A

The German steelmaker Salzgitter has begun a scheduled overhaul of blast furnace A at its plant in Salzgitter (Lower Saxony) – a scheduled overhaul of approximately 100 days. It is stated in a company’s message.

During the repair, the lining will be replaced, the complex technological process and control technology will be modernized.

More than €100 million will be invested in this complex project. Pirson Montage AG is a partner in it. According to Salzgitter, the supply of primary materials to internal processing plants and to subsidiaries during the repair phase will be guaranteed thanks to the pre-production of slabs.

The steelmaker said it is taking a specific approach that involves investing in existing operations while building a new manufacturing process known as SALCOS (Salzgitter Low CO₂ Steelmaking).

According to Gerda Baresh, Managing Director of Technology Salzgitter Flachstahl, the company is phasing out blast furnace production and has already begun to establish a new process route for new units such as direct reduction plants and electric arc furnaces. Accordingly, it will disable one of the domains already in 2026.

“By following this approach within SALCOS, we ensure that the steel plant in Salzgitter and its jobs will meet the needs of the future,” he said.

Blast furnace A was put into operation in 1977 and has an annual capacity of 2 million tons of pig iron.

As GMK Center reported earlier, in March 2023, the company’s chief executive Gunnar Grebler announced that this would be the last relining that Salzgitter would ever perform.

Also, production losses at the stage of project implementation will be compensated by an increase in slab stocks and a restart after a long downtime of blast furnace C at the same plant.