WP-Steel in 2004 © Uwe Niggemeier
The Republic Steel company just fired up it’s new electric arc furnace in Loraine, Ohio. It replaces two blast furnaces and a BOF steel making shop idled five years ago.
Blast furnace No. 3 has a hearth diameter of 8,68 meters, furnace No 4 is 8,83 meters wide.
The BOF shop was built in 1971 and it contains two 220 ton vessels.
Demolition started at the former RG Steel plant in Warren,OH that was purchased by the Hilco company in May. This deal required to market the hot mill for three months before beginning to raze the plant. Those three months expired at the end of August.
Founded in 1912 as the Trumbull Steel Co., the mill has a long history in steel production. In 1928, the company merged with Republic Iron and Steel Co. and, two years later, was renamed Republic Steel Corp. Another merger changed its name to LTV Steel Co. when it combined with J&L Steel Corp. in 1984. The company became Warren Consolidated Industries, Inc. in 1988.
WCI Steel employed 2,600 people, and had an annual steel capacity of 1.5 million tons. In 2008 WCI was taken over by the Russian steel company Severstal.
Three years later Severstal sold the plant to RG Steel who filed bancruptcy in 2012.
The Warren Blast Furnace once was the largest worldwide.
A few images from 2007.
The Carnegie Steel Ohio works on the banks of the Mahoning River around 1910.
This mill became part of U.S. Steel later and was closed in 1979.
Starting with the “Black Monday” in September 1977, the closure of Youngstown Sheet And Tube, the once thriving valley of steel was gutted within just one decade.
A recommendable book telling the story of this decline is John Russo’s “Steeltown U.S.A. – Work And Memory In Youngstown” published by the University Press Of Kansas.
