Slab Cutting

A steel slab under the cutting torch, sparks falling in every direction, the intensity of the light at the cutting point making the surrounding plant recede into darkness. This photograph was made at Port Kembla Steelworks in 2016, inside a plant that has been producing steel continuously since the first open hearth furnace tapped its first heat on 8 November 1931. The continuous slab casting process visible in this frame has its origins at Port Kembla in 1978, when the first continuous slab casting plant was commissioned as part of a broader shift away from ingot casting. By 1979, continuous casting had been adopted across the plant. The slabs produced here are flat steel products, plate, strip, coil, made for domestic and export markets, and the cutting operation shown is a standard step in reducing cast slabs to workable lengths for the rolling mills downstream. Port Kembla Steelworks began as the project of Hoskins Iron and Steel Co. Ltd, with construction commencing in 1926 on a coastal paddock purchased from the Wentworth Estate. The first blast furnace, designed by Freyn Engineering of Chicago and rated at 800 tonnes per day, was blown in on 29 August 1928. The furnace was lit by Emily Hoskins, widow of company founder Charles Hoskins, who had died in February 1926 before his works was finished. The furnace carried her name. The plant passed to BHP in 1935 and to BlueScope Steel in 2002. It now occupies 760 hectares and is Australia's largest crude steel production plant. The basic oxygen steelmaking vessels introduced in 1972 to 200/250 tonne capacity, replaced all open hearth furnace capacity by 1982 and remain the basis of steelmaking at the site today. This photograph records a plant that is neither abandoned nor winding down. At the time of capture in 2016, both blast furnaces had operated through successive relines and capacity adjustments. The cutting torch, the falling sparks, the slab itself: all of it live, operational, and continuing.