Dongbu Steel completes electric-arc furnace

DANGJIN, South Korea, Nov. 11 (Yonhap) -- Dongbu Steel Co., South Korea's
fourth-largest steelmaker, said Wednesday it has completed building an
electric-arc furnace as part of its efforts to become one of the world's leading
global steelmakers.
The new furnace in Dangjin, a port city some 130km southwest of Seoul, has an
annual production capacity of 3 million tons of hot-rolled steel sheets, the
company said.
Company officials said the new furnace's capacity is the world's biggest. Before
Dongbu's furnace, U.S. steelmaker Nucor Corp. had the world's largest
electric-arc furnace with an annual production capacity of 2.5 million tons.
"With the new electric-arc furnace, we took a step towards becoming an integrated
steel mill beyond a maker of cold-rolled steel sheets," Dongbu Group Chairman Kim
Jun-ki said in the statement. Dongbu Steel is one of the group's core units.
An electric-arc furnace allows a company to produce steel at a lower cost while
cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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