Whyalla steelworks blast furnace has been damaged, delaying its estimated restart date

The molten heart of SA’s Steel City is offline and for nearly two months experts have been working to restart Whyalla’s blast furnace, which has now been damaged during that process. This latest development has raised with the government grave concerns. We’ve reached out, we’ve said look, if there’s any international expert, any assistance that they need for us to fly in in the system, we’ll do it. In a statement, GFG Alliance said the furnace shell was damaged during recovery work and warned the repairs may delay the anticipated restart of steel making. Which was expected within weeks. the SA government is now sending its own independent experts to the plant to make sure that we get the answers that we want. This is a very, very important part of kit. We’re not ready to transition to electric art fairness. This blast furnace needs to survive. The furnace is nearly 60 years old. Its life has been extended previously by costly redlining, a process which has happened three times, most recently in 2004 on Friday before the damage occurred. ABC News asked GFG about the state it’s now in first condition is surprisingly good. We’ve had, we’ve had two external reports done in the time that I’ve been there and both reports are are quite positive in in the furnace condition. But with the site now facing a longer shutdown, the impact on workers may be significant. 1100 people are directly employed at the steelworks and many of them have already had their shifts and pay reduced. The question for us is to make sure that regular maintenance has been done to make sure that the money that needs to be invested has been invested. We had the blast furnace. Shut down essentially in recent weeks and and that. Puts thousands of jobs at potential risk. With no local steel rolling off the line, GFG says it’s importing billet so it can keep making some products to meet its customers orders.