Former Ilva: Taranto mayor orders plant shutdown, risk of hot area shutdown

Rome, 14 April (LaPresse) – The mayor of Taranto, Piero Bitetti, has issued an order requiring AdI Energia to suspend operations at the thermal power station that supplies the Taranto steelworks within 30 days. According to sources familiar with the matter, this shutdown could lead to the closure of the hot end. The closure of the power station makes it impossible to recover and manage the gases from the steelmaking process which, as they cannot even be flared, remain with no possibility of disposal. Under these conditions, the same sources explain, the production cycle cannot continue, because the inability to manage the gases from the steelmaking process leads, as a direct and inevitable consequence of the order, to the shutdown of the hot area, the heart of the Taranto plant. There would be knock-on effects, as without the hot section, and therefore without steel production in Taranto, downstream processing at the site and at the group’s other plants in northern Italy would come to a halt.