Friday 24th December 2010 – Whyalla is dominated by a massive steel works so I couldn’t come here and not have a look around.

I took a tour today and discovered steel is actually made from a combination of iron ore and other raw materials. These are shipped in from nearby mines at Iron Knob (and other places like Japan). Coal is then baked until it becomes coke which is used to fuel the massive blast furnace in which the raw materials are mixed.

It leaves the furnace as molten iron and waste materials. The molten iron is then transported by rail to the steelmaking and casting plant where it is made into large steel blocks.

These blocks are then melted down again (and combined with recycled steel to make different grades) in the rolling mill where they are made into steel rails. These go into the cooling ponds until they are ready to be stored and shipped to customers.

The whole site is 1000 hectare big (don’t know what that is in real money, but it was miles and miles!) and also incorporates the old shipyards.

I had no idea what a massive scale industry steel making is. It seems they run this plant on a very “clean” basis but its easy to see what a vast amount of energy is required to power it all and difficult to say that steel making is an environmentally friendly process.