BOC COMMISSIONS NEW INDUSTRIAL GASES PRODUCTION FACILITY AT ONESTEEL`S WHYALLA STEELWORKS

Main Menu | News By Date | News By Supplier | News By Category | About Us

BOC COMMISSIONS NEW INDUSTRIAL GASES PRODUCTION FACILITY AT ONESTEEL`S WHYALLA STEELWORKS
22 January 2002 - BOC Gases

The oxygen and nitrogen have begun flowing at BOC’s new industrial gases production plant at OneSteel’s Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia. The facility, constructed at a cost of $31 million (USD), includes a 715 tons-per-day (tpd) air separation unit (ASU), a 275tpd nitrogen liquefier, a 20tpd argon purifier, and 2300 tons of liquid storage.

"The new facility will meet Whyalla Steelworks’ current demand for industrial gases, and still allow for substantial growth of the South Australian and Northern Territory liquid oxygen, nitrogen and argon merchant markets for the next 15 years," says David Hind, managing director, Process Gas Solutions, South Pacific.

BOC and OneSteel signed the contract for the construction of the production facility in August 2000, and production began three weeks ahead of schedule on November 14, 2001. By relocating a plant from Newcastle, New South Wales, where it had supplied BHP until 1999, BOC was able to reduce the cost of the new facility. The principal contractor, Transfield Worley, procured the contract for dismantling the Newcastle plant and relocating it to Whyalla.

BOC owns and operates the gases production facility at the Whyalla site and will supply the Whyalla Steelworks with 500tpd of oxygen, 60tpd of nitrogen and 10tpd of argon. BOC operates the plant remotely from its South Pacific Operating Center in Sydney, New South Wales. On-site, the plant is manned 24 hours per day, employing a production manager and six supervisors.

The new production plant is part of a large BOC investment program in the South Pacific. Other recent investments include the Bulwer Island, Brisbane project with BP; the Port Kembla, New South Wales project with BHP Billiton; a new compressed gases production facility at Canning Vale, Perth, and new plants and supply contracts at Murrin Murrin in Western Australia, and Macraes in New Zealand.

The Whyalla Steelworks is a fully-integrated iron and steel making facility with production capacity of approximately 1.1 million tons of raw steel per year for OneSteel, which in turn services customers in such areas as the construction, mining, manufacturing, rural and rail transportation industries. OneSteel Whyalla Steelworks is the only Australian manufacturer of rails.

The successful construction and start-up of the Whyalla facility enabled BOC to decommission its Adelaide production facility that had been serving South Australia for more than 30 years.

http://www.boc.com

About: BOC Gases
Through its PGS line of business, BOC supplies gas and related solutions to the chemicals, petroleum, glass, water services, electronic packaging, fibre optics, hydrogen energy, metals and food industries. BOC helps meet customer needs in a variety of ways, from the supply of a single gas or application through to designing, constructing and operating fully integrated gas and utilities schemes.

The BOC Group, which serves two million customers in more than 50 countries, is one of the largest and most global of the world's leading gases companies. It employs some 44,500 people worldwide and had annual sales of over £4.3 billion in 2003. Further information about The BOC Group may be obtained on the Internet at www.boc.com

The BOC Group has an international portfolio of companies grouped for management control and reporting into three lines of business: Process Gas Solutions, Industrial and Special Products, and BOC Edwards. It also has a specialist logistics business, Gist.

More News:
  • For January 2002
  • From BOC Gases
  • For Gases