B.H.P. Planning £40m Expansion

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 17

B.H.P. Planning £40m Expansion

fIV.Z. Press Association —Copyright; SYDNEY, July 22. The B.H.P. Company will begin immediately a £4om expansion programme at the Australian Iron and Steel Pty. steelworks at Port Kembla.

The expansion Is expected to enable Australia to produce soon all its internal steel needs and eventually to build up an export trade. Plans announced yesterday provide for the installation of: A new strip mill, a new plate mill stand a new plate finishing line. Some of these units will come into operation by the end of 1967. A new blast furnace —the largest in the British Commonwealth —is expected to be commissioned in 1968. Other new plant envisaged in the expansion programme, including new cake ovens, hew steelmaking and rolling equipment and additions to the tinplate plant; could raise the cost of the expansion to more than £Bom. The figure could increase to well over £loom eventually when the company installs ad- ! ditional steelmaking plant to ' use the new mills to their cap- ’ acity. B.H.P. now employs 17,600 ' workers at Port Kembla. Be- ■ cause of the expansion it will 1 need an extra 500 to 600 workers every year for many years. A company statement yesterday said designs had been completed for major sections of the new plant and tenders had been invited. Most of it, except the blast furnace, would be built in Australia. The new plant will give Port Kembla a capacity of 4.5 m tons of hot strip and plate steel a year—more than double the present capacity. Largest In World The new blast furnace—No. s—will5 —will be one of the largest to the world and will have a yearly output of pig iron exceeding one million tons. The largest stogie unit in the immediate expansion programme will be the new strip mill. It will be erected close to the existing No. 1 hot strip

mill and will be developed from the existing 140-inch plate mill by adding six continuous finishing stands. Associated additions will include a slab reheating furnace. slab yard extensions, extension to the mill building, overhead crane and other services. To provide increased plate capacity, a second 140-inch reversing plate mill stand and another 120-ihch plate finishing line will be added. This will double the output of the 140-inch plate mill and will allow an output of plate exceeding 800,000 tons a year. Industry authorities said the Port Kembla expansion would enable the Australian steel industry to turh out about 48 per cent of its stee' as flat products, compared with about 65 per cent in the United States. Port Kembla at present is 1 the tenth largest steelworks in the world.