Reuters reported that the giant ILVA steel mill in Taranto, Italy is still able to meet customer demand while it seeks a solution to the environmental crisis which has threatened its closure.
Mr Bruno Ferrante CEO of ILVA steel mill said that "The plant is currently functioning at 70 percent, which is about 22,000 tonnes of pig iron a day. I'd say this has been the trend for about a month but we are meeting all the requests we're getting from the market so our customers are fully satisfied with what we're supplying from the point of view both of quality and quantity."
Judges in Taranto have placed key parts of the site under special administration and said it will have to be shut down if a solution is not found to the pollution which has created an environmental disaster in the southern Italian city.
Court documents, citing a number of environmental and health reports, say emissions of choking dust and dioxin and other cancer-causing chemicals from the plant, the largest in Europe, are believed to have caused hundreds of deaths from respiratory diseases in Taranto and the surrounding region.
For the moment, operations are continuing because the huge, continuously operating blast furnaces cannot be switched off without a long term shutdown of the site and Mr Ferrante said full capacity could be restored once cleanup operations start.
He added that "We're confident that once this cleanup process gets under way, our future production capacity will be able to be brought to the appropriate levels."
Mr Ferrante, a former government official, was appointed in July 2012 to run the plant just before prosecutors issued an order seizing the core of the production facilities and he has pledged to cooperate with investigators.
ILVA has pledged EUR 146 million in cleanup measures but Mr Ferrante said more was likely following a review by experts from the environment ministry who are looking into steps needed to award the plant approval to allow it to continue operating.
A decision on the steps needed for the award of so called AIA approval is expected by the end of September 2012.
Mr Ferrante defended the environmental record of ILVA's owners, the family owned Riva group which acquired the formerly state owned plant in 1995, saying it had invested some EUR 1.1 billion in environmental measures and had paid no dividend.
He said that "The plant today is completely different from 20 years ago. It has very new, advanced technology."
In more general terms, Mr Ferrante is a change in style from the previous management, which was the target of stinging criticism by Taranto judges for obstructing the efforts of environmental regulators. He said that "In the past, there were probably errors in communication and perhaps in attitude with regard to the judicial authorities. I am very open to dialogue."
Source - Reuters
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