Fires broke out early Tuesday morning at steelworks belonging to South Korea’s two largest steelmakers, POSCO and Hyundai Steel, causing extensive damage to some facilities but no fatalities, Mysteel Global learned. The fires broke out as powerful Typhoon Hinnamnor was battering the Korean Peninsula and investigators will reportedly be focussing on whether the events are related.
Of the two incidents, the one most likely to impact steel production will be the fires at POSCO’s Pohang Works in Korea’s southeast which erupted at 7.17 am at the company’s No.2 stainless steel plant and No.2 hot strip mill, according to Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
As Pohang City was directly in the path of the typhoon, POSCO had earlier announced that it was halting all operations at its Pohang works for 4-5 hours as a precautionary measure, including banking the blast furnaces.
Though the fires in steel plant and rolling shop were apparently extinguished quickly, a power outage caused coke oven gas to escape into the atmosphere in a burn-off, generating black smoke seen over a wide area.
The company is looking into whether the fires were related to Typhoon Hinnamnor, which moved out of South Korea on early Tuesday morning, Yonhap reported. POSCO has made no announcement regarding the present operational status of the two key facilities directly impacted.
Meanwhile, earlier at about 6:30 am Tuesday, a fire broke out in an energy storage system (ESS) at Hyundai Steel’s Incheon Works, west of the capital Seoul, that makes construction steel long products.
The fire erupted at a separate facility at the works operated by a company related to finance firm Kiwoom Securities where lithium-ion batteries are charged at night, with Hyundai Steel taking some of the power the ESS generates.
Local media reports say the fire took 7 hours to extinguish because of concerns about the presence of toxic gases the burning batteries would release.
Written by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com
This article has been published in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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