Steel Tapping

A basic oxygen steelmaking vessel tilts toward its tapping hole, the rounded mouth radiating a deep orange glow across the darkened mill floor. Heat shimmer rises from the vessel's lip. A large concrete block fitted with twin yellow D-ring handles sits directly in front of the opening, and yellow safety railings and a stairway to the left catch the furnace light. This photograph records that moment at Port Kembla Steelworks in 2016, on a site that has been producing steel on the NSW coast since 1931. Port Kembla Steelworks sits on 760 hectares of coastal plain south of Wollongong, bounded by Five Islands Road and the waters of Port Kembla harbour. Construction commenced in 1926 under Hoskins Iron and Steel Co. Ltd, with the first blast furnace designed by Freyn Engineering of Chicago at 800 tonnes per day capacity. Charles Hoskins, who had decided on Port Kembla as the company's new base and arranged the land purchase, died in February 1926 before the furnace was ever lit. His widow, Emily Hoskins, performed the ceremonial duties on 29 August 1928, and the furnace carried her name from that day. The first heat of steel was tapped from the first open hearth furnace on 8 November 1931. Open hearth steelmaking ran at Port Kembla for five decades. Basic oxygen steelmaking was introduced in 1972, in 200 to 250 tonne vessels. By 1982, following the installation of a third BOS vessel, the last open hearth furnaces were closed. It is the BOS process this photograph records. The vessel tilted toward the tapping hole, the mill floor lit by the glow inside it. At peak production in 1973, the steelworks exceeded 4,000,000 tonnes of steel per year and employed more than 20,000 people on site. The plant remains active. Blast furnace No. 5 is currently operating ahead of a scheduled retirement by 2030, while a $1.15 billion reline of blast furnace No. 6 is under way, designed to extend that furnace's life by 20 years. The fire at Port Kembla has not gone out since Emily Hoskins lit it nearly a century ago.