WHEELING-PITT Furnace launches a new era

The company will be able to use raw materials or scrap, depending on prices for each.
WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) -- Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. will begin ramping up production at a new $115 million furnace over the coming months and gradually decommission an old blast furnace in Steubenville, Ohio.
The continuous electric arc furnace, the cornerstone of the company's bankruptcy reorganization plan, was heated for the first time just before noon Sunday at a plant in Mingo Junction, Ohio.
"This is a historic moment for Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel," President and CEO James G. Bradley said Monday.
The furnace gives Wheeling-Pitt the flexibility to make steel with either raw materials or scrap as prices for each fluctuate. It is the only furnace in North America capable of using liquid iron and features a continuous scrap feed conveyor and a preheating process that heats the scrap to 1,000 degrees.
Wheeling-Pitt, which employs about 3,100 people at plants in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for nearly three years before it was able to collect a $250 million federally guaranteed loan.
When it emerged in August 2003, it became the first U.S. steelmaker to successfully reorganize since an import crisis that began in 1998. More than 40 other producers have filed for bankruptcy since then, and many have shut down or been sold.