Around 1,100 workers at the Whyalla Steelworks have accepted a temporary pay cut with operations halted due to issues with the plant's blast furnace. It's been offline for more than seven weeks. After it cooled too much following a planned two-day stoppage for routine maintenance. The arduous task of fixing it is just one of several problems the steelwork's billionaire owner Sanjeev Gupta, is now dealing with.
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00:00On the industrial horizon, on Wyala's outskirts, all eyes are on one smokestack.
00:07The clearer the clouds, seen as a sign of progress in the painstaking task of fixing the blast furnace below.
00:14In my 73 years in Wyala, I've never known this to happen before. I know it's very serious.
00:21The Liberty Steelworks has been offline now for more than seven weeks,
00:25since after a planned two-day stoppage for routine maintenance,
00:29the blast furnace cooled too much and molten metal hardened inside it.
00:34Basically from that point onwards we've been in a slow methodical recovery mode.
00:39We're very confident of that recovery happening.
00:42Liberty Steel, which is part of UK businessman Sanjeev Gupta's metals group, GFG Alliance,
00:48has struck a deal with the unions to shift the around 1,100 strong workforce
00:53to a temporary day shift Monday to Friday roster, rather than working around the clock.
00:59It means GFG staff are 20 to 30 per cent down on their usual wage,
01:04and there's a flow-on to contractors and labour hire firms who might have no work at all.
01:09Worker contracts have required that to happen. They've been suspended.
01:13All services have just not been acquired.
01:15The impacts of the shutdown have already been felt by other businesses in Wyala.
01:20We noticed business drop straight away. I also have family members affected by it,
01:24so we knew what was coming. Since then it's been up and down,
01:29and it's not all doom and gloom. We know it is going to get it running.
01:33And there are concerns about not only the current problems, but what the future holds.
01:37I think they're all on edge, is the feeling around the town.
01:42The town needs a place. It's a hard one to get going when it gets cold.
01:47I don't have any concerns myself. I know a few guys that work out there.
01:51They are a little bit concerned.
01:53Liberty says it will have the furnace making steel again by mid to late May.
01:57It will then still take quite a while to get the whole works going,
02:01because there is nothing happening out at the steelworks at the moment.
02:04No steel production. And then the normal process to get a blast furnace up and running again
02:09will take time, but it's essential that it happens,
02:12because Australia needs these steel produced in Wyala.
02:15And as they work to revive this ageing furnace, Sanjeev Gupta has his eye on what's next.
02:21He's promised to spend half a billion dollars on an electric furnace to make green steel here,
02:28and at the same time he's under increasing pressure to repay massive amounts of debt.
02:34But Mr Gupta still has the support of the Australian Government.
02:38It committed $63 million towards the electric furnace earlier this year,
02:43and the State Government has promised $50 million too.
02:46When it's operating in Wyala, it's first day, works, they'll get our $50 million.
02:52The future is green for this steel city if the promises made are kept,
02:57and that starts with fixing a 59-year-old blast furnace.