After fire disruption, WCI Steel begins to restart its operations

WCI’s blast furnace should be producing quality iron by today.

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

WARREN — Production at WCI Steel is slowly ramping up after damage to its blast furnace was repaired.

Crews started loading the blast furnace with coke, iron ore and limestone Sunday.

WCI has 1,300 hourly and salaried workers.

Its blast furnace has been down since Nov. 9 when a fire started in the hydraulic rooms on the main deck.

Though repairs have been completed, the company will need some time to return to full production, said Tim Roberts, a company spokesman.

The furnace is expected to produce molten iron of satisfactory quality by late today. The basic oxygen furnace, which turns the iron into steel, and the caster, which produces steel slabs, are expected to be restarted later this week.

Those operations have been down since the fire.

The company’s rolling mill continued operating until this past Wednesday using slabs that had been in inventory. The rolling mill may be restarted on a limited basis next week, Roberts said.

He declined to comment on how much the fire has cost WCI or how much production has been lost. Company officials have been talking to customers to try to minimize any disruption in their operations, he said.

The company didn’t lay off any workers because of the stoppage in production.

WCI’s labor contract calls for workers with at least three years’ service to be paid 40 hours a week, so workers have been reporting for other duties, such as housekeeping, Roberts said. Some workers have accepted voluntary layoffs.

WCI’s production also was hurt earlier this year because of unplanned production outages at the mill. The company recorded $16.8 million in losses in the first half of the year, which it attributed to lost production and a weak market.

In one incident, production was lost because a vessel that carries molten iron was damaged. In April, the blast furnace was taken off line because of other work being done at the mill, but the one-week outage turned into three weeks because crews had trouble restarting the furnace.

shilling@vindy.com