Wheeling-Pitt Breaks Ground on EAF

Wheeling-Pitt, which emerged from bankruptcy this past August, broke ground on an electric arc furnace in Mingo Junction, Ohio. The company is building the facility that will allow it to use ferrous scrap as the raw material for making new steel. The company is using $110 million from federally funded guaranteed loans to build the furnace.

The company also expects to keep its traditional furnaces operational, allowing the company use whichever material makes greater economic sense at that time.

The new EAF will replace one of the company's operating blast furnaces. According to James Bradley, president of Wheeling-Pitt, the inclusion of the EAF will allow the company to produce steel at the lowest possible cost. It will have the capability to feed both scrap and liquid iron stock from its remaining metallic inputs to the EAF.

Wheeling-Pitt, the sixth largest integrated steel company in the United States, had been in bankruptcy protection for three years.