Blast furnace No. 2 at the Presidente Vargas plant returns to service

The company CSN in Brazil, announced that blast furnace No. 2 will begin its work. Domna is in the territory of the factory Presidente Vargas in Rio de Janeiro. Its annual capacity is around 1.5 million tons of pig iron. This amount provides approximately 30% of the volume produced by the factory metal. The furnace was discontinued in early 2016. The reason was the sharp deterioration of the market environment in Brazil and the growth of losses of the company. As reported by the Brazilian experts, today there are changes for the better.

Their assessment was made by the specialists of the Instituto Aco Brasil, the national Institute of steel. According to them in September 2016 and steel sector resumed growth. For the past 15 months improvement was observed. The volume of melted steel in September reached 2.58 million tons. This figure exceeds the result of the September 2015 3.1%. However, this improvement is only the beginning of the recovery process. If you compare today’s data with September 2013, in the period of metal production in the country amounted to 2.98 million tons. Despite the improvement, today the volume of domestic sales is lower than in 2015. In September of this year the exported volume fell by 13.1% compared to September 2015. In numerical terms, the exports of 1.35 million tonnes.

The President of the Institute, Marco Polo de Mello Lopes gave his assessment regarding blast furnace No. 2. Prior to its commissioning at the plant level load on average does not exceed 60 per cent in the steel sector of the country. To date, however, the peak of the recession passed. It can be assumed that in 2017 the capacity will be 75−80 percent amid renewed economic growth.

However, the company CSN consider the possible sale of certain of the stock units Congonhas Minerios. The buyer will be the company from China Brazil China Xinnenghuan International Investment Co. It is assumed that the selling part will be 25%. Experts believe that cost of operations will exceed 1 billion USD. Note that CSN in Brazil occupies the second position among exporters of iron ore. Last year the company has exported abroad more than 28 million tons of raw materials. To the sale of shares brought the company’s desire to reduce debt. Its size has reached about 8 billion USD.