A FIRE has forced the world’s second-biggest steelmaker to halt one of its blast furnaces and some production lines.
The fire at Nippon Steel’s Yawata mill on 29 July 2008 was burning at several places on a gas pipe and took 20 hours to die out.
The 15m square metre plant supplies sheet steel to Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor’s car factories in the area. It also produces bar steel and steel pipes.
Employing 2950 people, it had a crude steel output of about four million tonnes in 2007, making up a tenth of the company’s total output.
The fire began on a coke-carrying conveyor belt apparatus which collapsed from the damage, affecting pipes carrying inflammable gas outside the building. The coke plant itself did not catch on fire.
With the blast furnace, two coke plants and some production lines halted, crude steel production effectively ground to a halt.
Nippon Steel operates nine blast furnaces throughout Japan.

Update: The furnace has been restarted as of 7am Japan time, 30 July 2008.

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