On Wednesday, Nippon Steel Corp. stated that one of two smelting furnaces at the Kimitsu Steel Works in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, had ceased operations Monday after a chimney collapsed due to a typhoon.
One of the worst typhoons to hit eastern Japan in years struck Monday east of Tokyo, killing one woman, with record winds and heavy rains destroying buildings and disrupting transport links.
"We are still investigating the damage and we do not know how long it will take to repair the chimney and resume work," said a spokeswoman for Nippon Steel, Japan's largest steel producer.
The production halls are operating normally, she said, but if the shutdown of Oxygen Furnace # 1 takes longer, the plant may have to cut production to accommodate the lower productivity of the steelmaking process.
Nippon Steel Corporation is a Japanese steel company, the largest in Japan and the third largest in the world. Formed in 2012 as a result of the merger of Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal. By the end of 2020, the company plans to produce 41 million tons of steel.
