Port Kembla Steelworks Tour - July 2023

Some interesting facts about BlueScope

BlueScope employs around 3,000 directly in the Illawarra and supports about 10,000 jobs in the Illawarra - including contractors, suppliers and other service providers who are dependent on the Port Kembla Steelworks.
BlueScope accounts for more than $2 billion in sales of locally produced steel each year, and the Port Kembla Steelworks has a production capacity of just over 3 million tonnes of steel per annum. The Steelworks covers 760 hectares (7.6 km²).
BlueScope in the Illawarra is the home of COLORBOND® steel, which was developed at their own in-house and Australia’s largest manufacturing research facility.

19 of us gathered at Sutherland Station for the 8:45 train to Coniston – we all arrived in plenty of time realising that Coniston trains were few and far between. Mark chose a day with perfect July weather for the tour and we enjoyed each other’s company on the scenic journey down the coast. I ended up sitting next to a Spanish heritage guy (non-Probus) who was set up studying English grammar in preparation for writing a few books. We talked for most of the trip about learning languages, education … then got on to his working career which had parallels with mine – very interesting guy. It seems that I wasn’t the only person in on the conversation as his loud voice apparently included the other 18 members of the group as well. Our bus driver Michael was waiting for us at Coniston and had us at BlueScope in no time.

After a cuppa, we were ushered into a training room and introduced to our tour guides Tom and Peter who both had been longstanding employees. A brief talk about the steelmaking process and a couple of videos preceded us getting kitted up with dustcoat, helmet, gloves and radio headsets – ready to rumble.

The site is bigger than the Vatican, covered in enormous buildings serviced by many kilometres of rail tracks and roads. According to Tom, the Port Kembla facility tour is the most up close and personal a member of the public can get to seeing hearing and feeling the steelmaking process anywhere on the planet. We were only ~30m from the Basic Oxygen process as they brewed up over 300T of molten steel which spued out gas, carbon and metallic products – awesome! Pour that lot out and go round again with another 80T of scrap steel and 250T of iron ore separately precision loaded by highly skilled crane drivers. We were then off to see the thick slabs pruned off to 11m lengths with oxy torches in preparation for rolling into various thinner strips. The radiant heat from the orange hot slabs ~20m away was significant – one wouldn’t want to get much closer! The final process of thinning those orange hot slabs was witnessed from an elevated viewing room and again down at ground level where the final product was coiled up tight ready for delivery. Tom and Peter answered all of our many questions and were fabulous guides. I wasn’t clock-watching, but the tour lasted ~3 hours and was interesting/engaging the whole time. Sadly, no photos were allowed, so words will have to suffice. Now back to the Visitors Centre back into civvies with healthy appetites.

Michael had us in the bus and up to Coniston Pub for lunch a bit after 1:30. The challenge now was to get fed and watered and on the 2:33 (hourly) train back to Sutherland. As it turned out, the Coniston Pub served us up some great food in plenty of time to catch the early train – brilliant!

Many thanks to Mark Winnell for organising another great event – I’m pretty sure we all learnt a lot and had a great time. Written by: Malcolm Stephen