A report on the website of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation has announced a power failure at the company’s Nagoya Works in Japan.
The power failure occurred at 1150hrs on Friday 17 January and required the coke oven gas to be burnt off and released. Power was resumed to manufacturing facilities on the following Saturday morning (January 18th) but the problem re-occurred on Monday 20 January at around 0910hrs.
According to the company, “Smoke was released,” but by 1115hrs “smoke dispersion was ended”.
No injuries were reported from the incident and the company announced that it was investigating ‘the possible effects to the manufacturing facilities of the Nagoya Works.
“The material damage to those facilities is limited at this point,” the company claimed, adding that it intended to ‘take measures to ensure that the product supply to our customers would not be affected’.
A report by Reuters claimed that ‘there is no estimate for when the plant, which produced 6.46Mt of crude steel in the year to March 2013, will return to production’.
The Nikkei Business Daily said that the power failure would have a minimal effect on supplies and has re-assured some of its big automaker customers, including the Toyota Motor Corp.