Cape Town Iron and Steel Works (Pty) Ltd., a scrap-based steelmaking company, produces billets in South Africa. The company was founded in 1967
The electric arc furnace process starts with raw material, which in this case is mostly steel scrap. The meltshop, where the steel is melted, consumes approximately 280 000t of scrap steel annually.
The scrap is processed in a scrap yard adjacent to the plant before it is loaded into scrap buckets which are then charged into the electric arc furnace.
The electric arc furnace melts the scrap down into molten steel. This is achieved by lowering three electrically charged graphite electrodes onto the scrap. When the electrodes are close enough to the scrap, an arc is formed between the electrodes and the scrap. The molten steel is transported to the casting machine were it is cast into billets. The billets are rectangular pieces of steel 120mm x 120mm and 4.5m to 6m long.
A quality management system is implemented and monitors the steel throughout the manufacturing process.