Firing up of blast furnace at Zelezara Smederevo postponed

Zelezara Smederevo (Photo: zelsd.rs)

Despite the announcements from Zelezara Smederevo that its blast furnace would be fired up in late June, there is still no smoke from the steelworks chimney. Zelezara Smederevo CFO Bojan Bojkovic told the daily Politika the following: "everything is going as planned, only the firing up of the blast furnace is postponed for few days." He did not state either the reason for this postponement or the exact date when the furnace would be commissioned.

However, Politika cites unofficial sources as saying that not everything is going as planned after all. The postponement is due to a shortage of coke, and the stock of raw materials is also insufficient, a source from the steel plant in Smederevo claims. There are about 19,000 tonnes of coke in stock, which is enough for about two weeks of production, and the order received from Lukavac, Bosnia-Herzegovina exclusively depends on whether Sberbank will grant a loan for that purpose to the steel mill.

People at the Smederevo steelworks anxiously await the autumn to hear the final decision on the status of this Serbian steel plant. The Government of Serbia said the third tender to sell the former giant in Smederevo would be announced in July. The most serious potential partners are Esmark Steel Group from Chicago, Russia's Uralvagonzavod, and the British investment fund Westwood with the headquarters in Vienna.