This impressive Olympic flame-style ignition of a blast furnace in Port Talbot, Wales, is firing up the UK steel industry after a £185m investment by Tata Steel.

The total rebuild of Blast Furnace No 4 – the UK’s largest industrial engineering project at the time – involved a huge team of 800 experts working around the clock, 24/7.

Rouha Hussaina, engineer on the project was chosen to light the furnace by holding a flaming lance to a tuyere.

New furnace sparks eco-era for UK steel manufacturing

The new state-of-the-art furnace is now one of the most efficient in the world and is set to spark a new era of sustainable steel manufacturing in the UK with improved energy efficiency, environmental performance, safety standards and capacity.

Tata Steel Blast Furnace 4 Construction TimeLapse on Vimeo.

But this blast furnace is more than just hot air – it’s serious heavy metal. It’s capable of producing an additional 400kt of iron per year, giving a potential production of 5mt of steel a year to meet the demands of Tata Steel’s customers which include the automotive, aerospace, construction and rail industries.

Tata Steel’s new furnace is a real blast from the past with £185m investment

The new furnace was made using steel manufactured by Tata Steel, but nothing was wasted during the rebuild. Some 3,500 tonnes of steel were recycled from the old furnace, along with copper and aggregates.

The project is part of Tata Steel’s £250m investment plan in the Port Talbot steelworks site, which also includes the installation of three new stoves, two new pump-houses, a cooling tower, two new electrical substations, a ferrous stock-house and feed system and the upgrade of electrical distribution infrastructure.

The furnace investment has also ignited production at Tata Steel’s second hot strip mill in Llanwern, giving Tata greater operational flexibility to meet the needs of its customers with a reliable supply chain of high-quality steels, ensuring it burns bright in a competitive, worldwide market.