Port Kembla No. 6 Blast Furnace Reline, Wollongong

BlueScope’s No. 6 blast furnace reline at Port Kembla is a A$1.15 billion bet that Australia’s largest steelworks needs two more decades of coal-based ironmaking before anything cleaner can replace it. The furnace has sat cold since 2011, when BlueScope pulled back from export markets and cut the plant to a single furnace. Now it’s being rebuilt to take over from No. 5, which was last relined in 2009 and is close to the end of its campaign.

The board approved the project in August 2023 after the estimate climbed from about A$1 billion. A project summary filed with the federal government in early 2026 showed more than A$1 billion already committed and a completion target of 31 August 2026. In its August 2026 results BlueScope said the restart had moved into early fiscal 2027, citing the scale and complexity of the job.

Project Scope

A reline is closer to a rebuild than a repair. BlueScope is renewing the hearth, the refractory lining and the copper cooling staves. It’s also refurbishing the shell and the stockhouse and replacing the furnace top, where Paul Wurth is the sole-source supplier of the gearbox. Gas cleaning and slag granulation sit on the same package list as the electrical and control systems, and that list runs past 100 items.

Two additions are new to Port Kembla. A waste gas heat recovery system uses heat exchangers on the flue gas to improve combustion and trim fuel gas demand. A top gas recovery turbine will generate about 12 to 13 megawatts from furnace gas that would otherwise give up its pressure for nothing. BlueScope has earmarked about A$100 million of the budget for environmental improvements.

Marr Contracting holds the heavy lift contract and put an M2480D tower crane on a 7.5-meter-square piled base beside the furnace instead of bringing in a 600-tonne crawler. That let crews lift out large sections that would normally be serviced in place. Around 250 workers were on site at the halfway mark, with BlueScope running the job through an in-house team of about 160.

Why It Matters

Port Kembla makes roughly 3.1 million tonnes of steel a year, and local reporting puts the relined furnace at about 2.6 million tonnes of iron. BlueScope’s Australian flat steel business depends on the handover from No. 5 going cleanly.

BlueScope calls the reline a bridge, and the company has been blunt that hydrogen, renewable power and suitable ore aren’t available at the scale a direct reduction plant would need. That was a fair reading in 2023. The risk is that a 20-year campaign life becomes a 20-year reason to wait. Whether this furnace runs its full campaign will say more about Australian green steel policy than any roadmap.

Project Team & Details