Restart of Severstal Warren begins

By DON SHILLING

news@vindy.com

WARREN

The restart of Severstal Warren is under way.

Crews began work Monday that is needed to fire up the mill’s blast furnace, which has been down since October 2008.

The plan calls for the basic oxygen furnace to go into operation later this week, said Bette Kovach, a company spokeswoman. The basic oxygen furnace takes molten iron produced in the blast furnace and refines it into steel.

Other parts of the mill are to come up by the end of the month, Kovach said.

This includes restarting the continuous caster, which takes the liquid steel and produces slabs, and the hot-strip mill, which begins processing the slabs.

Severstal is not restarting the cold-strip mill in Warren at this time. Steel bands that are produced from the hot-strip mill will be sent to other Severstal mills for further processing.

The company has said it will restart the cold-strip mill only if it is needed to meet demand.

Kovach said the company isn’t releasing the number of workers on the job, but a union official said earlier this month that 500 workers had been recalled. Union officials could not be reached late Monday to comment.

About 1,050 workers had been laid off before the recalls started.

The blast furnace originally was closed for maintenance but then wasn’t restarted because of the economy’s decline at the end of 2008. The rest of the mill was idled in early 2009.

Severstal has been saying for the past two months that it would restart the mill in mid-March because of an increase in orders.