Hot dip tin plate production was introduced in 1957, a cold strip mill in 1961 and an electrolytic tinning plant in 1962 when an oxygen injection process was also introduced to steelmaking. No. 4 blast furnace at Port Kembla was blown-in in 1959, the largest in Australia and one which held the world production record for a short time, only to be overtaken by No. 5 furnace in 1972. The introduction of basic oxygen steelmaking at Port Kembla in 1972 was the forerunner of impressive developments in steelmaking techniques and in steel types and quality produced. In 1975, the new argon-oxygen decarburizing of stainless steel was put into practice, followed in 1978 by vacuum degassing (decarburizing), desulphurizing and, in 1979, continuous slab casting. 1981 saw more efficient use of energy with recovery of BOS gas heat at Port Kembla and the installation of top pressure, expansion turbines in No. 5 blast furnace. Between 1985 and 1987, other major units of plant have been progressively upgraded to the most modern anywhere. These units include the wide plate mill with modern computer control system, the hot strip mill including advanced computer control and a new walking beam furnace. These major innovations in the steel industry at Port Kembla effectively transformed the Company into a large integrated flat rolled products plant which was ultimately recognized by a change in name in 1985 to BHP Steel International, Slab and Plate Division, the largest steelmaking division in BHP.

The enormous increase in capacity of the plant over 55 years, but particularly since the mid-fifties is shown in the following table of raw steel production for ten year periods.

Table 1 Total raw steel production for each of six decades


Source: BHP Steel International, Slab and Plate Division

The innovations and developments of the Slab and Plate Division are intimately bound-up with the requirements of its customers, the largest of which was John Lysaght (Australia) Ltd. which ultimately became a wholly owned subsidiary of BHP and, under the recent reorganization, became BHP Steel International, Coated Products Division.

The original Lysaght establishment at Newcastle produced uncoated and coated sheet steel products by the transverse piece rolling of sheet bar supplied by BHP Newcastle. In the mid-thirties, it was clear that a limit had been reached to further efficient expansion and plans for a new plant at Port Kembla were begun. Newcastle production at this time had not overtaken the increasing demand in Australia for flat products. At Newcastle, taking into account lengths, widths, thicknesses, types of steel and types of coatings, many hundreds of different orders were being rolled, some in quite small quantities. The plant had the flexibility to deal with this and so the planning for Port Kembla was along the lines of handling large tonnages of a more limited range of orders.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering