KEYNOTE ADDRESS CHAIRED BY ERKKI PISILA - RUUKKI STEEL COMPANY

摘要

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen. It's my great pleasure to come to present the keynote address in this year McMaster Symposium. For that I want to thank the organizing committee. Eleven years ago I had the same honour at the 23rd McMaster Symposium. At that time we had gone through a very bad recession period and many steel plants were trying to increase capacities. So at that time the key issue of the Symposium was Improved Productivity of the Blast Furnace Operation. It was a very timely one then, too. Many companies had not collected enough money to make a huge investment and the outdated technologies were improved in small steps. I come from the steel plant located in Northern Finland. There we have identical twins, BF 1 and BF 2. The only difference is the charging; one uses bell with MTA and the other a compact bell-less top.