A selection of News in Briefs from STI March

Wisco to develop iron ore mine

Wuhan Iron and Steel (Wisco) will, in cooperation with Canadian mining company Adriana Resources, develop the Lac OteInuk iron ore mine in Quebec, Canada, which has reserves of 6bnt of magnetite ore with iron content at just 30%.

Nucor opt for Energiron DRI

US steel producer Nucor has awarded Tenova HYL and Danieli a contract for the world’s largest single DR module.

Nucor will install a 2.5Mt/y Energiron ZR plant using Tenova HYL’s reformerless process design. The plant will be built in Louisiana, and supply high carbon DRI to Nucor steel plants.

The plant will be designed to produce cold-discharge DRI of 96% metallization and 3.0% carbon in the form of iron carbide, which will be shipped to Nucor’s producing facilities that will use the DRI in their steelmaking process. The Energiron ZR process allows the selective capture of CO2. See ‘Shale gas’ feature this issue.

Chinese consumption grows

China’s consumption of steel was 48.53kt in November, up 5.9% y-o-y. This was mainly because output in 2009 was low.

Crude output in November was roughly the same as in October. Provincial governments’ policy on banning production was still in place during the period but faded out in December. It means steel production will increase in 2011.

Source China Metals e-mail [email protected]

German 2010 crude steel output

Germany’s crude steel production for the 12 months 2010 was 43.8Mt, up 34% on 2009 – an exceptionally low year with an output of 32.7Mt, the lowest for over 40 years.

Capacity utilisation of plant was 84% compared with a world average of 78%.

For 2011, only a 1.6% growth in crude steel output is forecast by the German Iron & Steel Institute (VDEh) with output forecast at 44.5Mt.

Ferrexpo production rise

Ukrainian iron ore miner Ferrexpo said its overall pellet production rose 14% in 2010 from the previous year to meet stronger demand from steelmakers. Total pellet output, including production from third-party concentrate, rose to 10Mt for the year.

Its own ore output continued at full capacity in December, resulting in 770.4kt of pellets produced for the month.

Overall pellet production in the last month of the year was down 2.9% from November, but was 8.1% higher than December 2009’s figure.