User:Nowakki/Huachipato steel mill

The Export-Import Bank of Washington provided $48 million of loans (of the $87,450,000 total required) to the Corporacion de Fomente de la Produccion for the establishment of a Chilean integrated steel mill. The Compania de Acero del Pacifico (CAP; Pacific Steel Company) was established. The steel mill in its original form was completed in August 1950 with assistance from the United States by the Koppers Company, Freyn Engineering, H. A. Bassert and others (it formally opened on November 25, 1950). It had a capacity of 200,000 tons of steel ingots and 185,000 of finished steel products per year and soon operated at capacity (in the two top record months of July and August 1951 steel ingot production was 17,979 and 16,437 metric tons, respectively). On August 11, 1951 the Export-Import Bank announced the grant of a new $10 million credit, to install another open hearth furnace and increase ingot capacity to 280,000 tons per year and to install new rolling mills and increase finished steel products capacity to 214,000 tons.

The steel mill made Chile the third Latin American country to establish a basic iron and steel industry and under these conditions also an exporter of steel products. When opened it was already the second largest steel mill on the continent, behind Brazil's Volta Redonda.

Coke plant

The original plant had a battery of 57 Koppers ovens.

Contract let to Koppers in August 1951 for a battery of 13 byproduct ovens.

Open hearth

In May 1957 Koppers was contracted to construct #4 open hearth furnace (220 tons) as part of a $26 million expansion program.

The #4 open hearth was a 200 metric ton furnace, numbers 1 through 3 were of 100 metric tons.