In early September, Austria's largest metallurgical company Voestalpine will restart a small blast furnace in Linz, which was temporarily shut down in March following a slump in consumer demand caused by Covid-19.
According to the company, the gradual recovery in demand, which is most noticeable today in the automotive, electrical and manufacturing industries, has led to an increase in demand for high-quality steel grades.
The first signs of recovery are also evident in the mechanical engineering and energy sectors, for which the Linz facility also produces high quality steel products, Voestalpine noted.
Together with two other blast furnaces at the site, the restart of the small blast furnace is bringing steel production back to near normal levels after capacity was cut due to Covid-19.
Voestalpine manufactures high quality steel products at two sites in Austria. The company operates one large and two small blast furnaces at the Linz site, with a combined capacity of around five million tonnes of pig iron per year. Two more blast furnaces are located in Donavice - they produce a total of up to 1.5 million tons of pig iron per year.
