Dongkuk Steel’s blast furnace operation in its CSP Steel Mill in Brazil has been put off until the second quarter of next year.
According to the company’s announcement on Nov. 4, the initial firing of the blast furnace has been postponed from December this year to the second quarter of 2016, and the major shareholders of the steel mill, such as the Brazilian Development Bank, have been notified of the plan.
CSP is a joint venture established by Dongkuk Steel, POSCO and Vale. It is working on the steel mill with an annual capacity of three million tons in CEARA, a state in northeastern Brazil. A total of US$5.46 billion is invested in the project as the largest foreign investment project in the northeastern region of the Latin American country.
POSCO Engineering & Construction started the construction process in 2012 and the rate of progress reached 95.7 percent at the end of October this year, showing a delay of approximately 3.7 percent with respect to the initial plan.