voestalpine’s Linz-Donawitz process

The steel mill was already producing when it was inaugurated on January 5, 1953 by the President of Austria, Theodor Körner. The second LD steel mill went into operation shortly thereafter – on May 22, 1953 – at the Österreichisch-Alpine Montangesellschaft (ÖAMG) in Donawitz. By June, the first 100,000 tons of LD steel had been produced, and by the beginning of December 250,000 tons of steel had been smelted. And that was just the beginning. The LD process quickly attracted international interest, and new marketing channels were developed.

In 1957, in order to prove the suitability of sheet metal made of LD steel for shipbuilding, VÖEST decided to build seagoing ships. And just over a year later, on December 1958, the "M.S. Linzertor" was launched. This first VÖEST produced freight ship had a load capacity of 14,000 tons. This ship proved to all critics that LD steel was the ideal material for shipbuilding. Less expensive to produce and much purer than previously used steels, LD steel completely satisfied shipowners and shipbuilders. And by the end of 1959, around 50,000 tons of LD steel had been sold to the shipbuilding industry alone.

Also in 1957, at the same time that it was developing shipbuilding as a distribution channel, VÖEST started up another totally new business area: together with the Krupp company, VÖEST set up the first LD steel mill outside Austria – in Rourkela, 460 km southwest of Calcutta. This was virtually the start in international industrial plant building, which went on to become one of voestalpine's main businesses.

In 1960, 4% of the global total crude steel production was produced using the LD process. In 1970 this figure was already 40%, in 1974 it rose to almost 50%, in 1992 it was 60% and today, 60 years after the first casting in Linz, around two-thirds of the world's steel is produced using the LD process. Thanks to the LD process, global steel production has increased from 200 million tons at that time to around 1.5 billion tons per year. It is only due to this process that certain grades of steel or steel applications are even possible – e.g. in the automotive and energy industries.