Nippon Steel says the stoppage of a cold-rolling mill at its Nagoya Works in central Japan after last week’s fire impacted its operations less than had been expected, with most of the facilities at the mill restarted after a couple days and as of Wednesday, overall production at the mill had mostly returned to normal.
The company was forced to idle one of two CR mills at the Nagoya works after a fire broke out on December 7 at the mill’s electrolytic cleansing facility.
A Nippon Steel official said the facility is still not able to operate but “not all CRC needs to go through that cleansing, and for products which do require that process, we can use another one in the other CR mill,” she explained. “So production has returned to normal and we expect the production loss to be very limited.”
Generally, CR coils are annealed then electro-galvanized or hot dip galvanized and for most applications, this is sufficient, industry sources explain. However, some customers require the additional process of electrolytic cleansing though the volume is comparatively tiny – only about 10,000 tonnes/month in the case of the Nagoya mill, Mysteel Global understands.
An official from an auto parts maker in Nagoya confirmed that his company has been receiving material from the Nagoya works normally. “We were really worried about the impact of the fire and delays to deliveries. Our production level is high at the moment and we would face some trouble if we could not receive material on time,” he added.
A Nagoya-based steel trader noted that the Nagoya works had experienced many accidents over the past six years and so industry watchers had felt that by this time, the works would have strengthened its safety measures. “We were surprised by the fire this time, frankly,” he admitted. “Japan’s steel mills have been spending more in updating facilities and trying to install advanced technologies for safety measures, but there are many aged facilities still operating,” he warned. About 70-80% of the steel production facilities still in operation in Japan are nearly 40 years old.
In 2014, the Nagoya works had no fewer than five facility incidents including a fire at a coke oven in September, which injured 16 workers, Mysteel Global notes. Nippon Steel had to record a loss of Yen 24 billion ($232 million) from the five accidents, Mysteel Global notes.
“We are still investigating the machinery where the fire occurred to trace the cause. When we find it, we will take appropriate measures to operate safely,” the Nippon Steel official added.
Nippon Steel’s Nagoya works produced 5.81 million tonnes of crude steel during the year ended March 2020. Over half of the finished products made at the works are supplied to auto-related customers, as previously reported.
Written by Yoko Manabe, yoko.manabe@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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