Redcar blast furnace, part of the former Teesside, UK Steelworks, and once the second largest of its kind in Europe, has been demolished in a controlled explosion after close to 40 years of production.
At its height, the furnace produced 3.6Mt of iron a year.
A 250-metre exclusion zone was put in place for the levelling of the furnace and remained in place for at least 30 minutes afterwards. The casting houses, the dust catcher and the conveyors were also destroyed.
Members of the public have been told to be aware of the wind direction, as dust from the explosion could travel.
The four gas stoves that heated the furnace are set to be demolished in separate explosions over the next month.
The furnace has not operated since October 2015 when SSI UK, the company that was running it, went into liquidation. The Basic Oxygen Steelmaking plant of the same steelworks was demolished in October, in one of the ‘largest single explosive demolition operations in the country in 75 years’.
The former steelworks site is being cleared to create the Teesworks industrial zone, the UK's largest freeport.
Source: BBC News
