The Arcelor furnace fire halts the industrial recovery of Asturias in its tracks

2023-05-03 04:15:00

The fire in one of the two blast furnaces in Gijón has caused a slowdown in the recovery of the activity of the Asturian industry. The incident occurred on March 22 and in that month there was already a 2% drop in factory production in Asturias, as published yesterday by the Asturian Society for Economic and Industrial Studies (Sadei). In addition, the experts from this study office dependent on the Principality warn that the impact of the forced stoppage of the blast furnace will be greater in the coming months.

At the moment, the work to empty the kiln and to be able to assess the damage from the fire is still underway. The pig iron extraction tasks carried out so far have not been successful. On April 24, a detonating cord was placed, which did not achieve the objective of detaching the solidified material that has adhered to the walls of the furnace. Attempts made in the following days using other techniques were also unsuccessful and for this reason ArcelorMittal decided to place explosives inside the furnace through some of the nozzles –air injection ducts– to try to fragment the solidified pig iron. Controlled explosions began yesterday afternoon and were scheduled to continue throughout today. After each blast, the effects are evaluated to decide whether to proceed with the next one or whether it is necessary to extract the detached material. The company has announced to the workers that the generation of noise will be unavoidable and that diffuse emissions could also be produced with the detonations.

Kiln emptying is necessary to assess fire damage. Whether the blast furnace A in Gijón, whose useful life ends in 2025, will work again will depend on the state of the installation and the cost of the repair. Its stoppage is already affecting Asturian manufacturing activity, as happened between September 2022 and February of this year, when the furnace stopped due to the contraction of the steel market in Europe due to the uncertainty generated by the war in Ukraine. The war conflict brought the post-covid industrial recovery to a halt and when the industrial production graph was rising again – in February ArcelorMittal reactivated the blast furnace – the fire broke out at the Gijón steel factory.

In March, industrial activity fell 2% year-on-year – the previous month the decrease had been only 0.5% – and Sadei experts highlight the blast furnace fire as the main cause, despite the fact that it occurred on the day 22 of that month. In addition, the experts highlight “the projection that this fact may have on short-term results, given the limiting effect that it entails in order to satisfy already acquired production commitments.”

Along with the fire at the blast furnace, “the sharp decline in the generation of electrical energy, especially thermal, or commercial decisions in certain chemical activities” also contributed to the drop in industrial activity in Asturias, which counteracted “the effects of the positive evolution of the metal industry, driven by the good performance of the naval sector and of some companies oriented towards engineering projects”, especially renewable energies.