小名浜銅製錬所の建設について

抄録

Japanese copper industry had been concentrating its effort to expand and modernize its smelters and refineries to overcome the trade liberalization of copper slated for 1964. Also there was a generally accepted feeling that a modern, efficient, large scale plant of joint ownership with relating industries be constructed to demolish old, less efficient, smalloperations.
Onahama Plant has been the copper smelter-refinery combined thus extablished by Mitsubishi Metal Mining Co., Ltd., Dowa Mining Co., Ltd., Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., Furukawa Mining Co., Ltd., etc. The intial production capacity is 5, 000 metric tons of electrolytic copper and its cast forms per month with the following expansion planned up to10, 000 metric tons in near future.
The plant is located in the 62 acre site at the ocean front of the area's best Onahama harbor, in the city of lwaki, Fukushima prefecture.
The ground was broken in February, 1964 and the plant started commercial operation from October, 1965. The full production of 5, 000 metric tons was achieved as early as the very next month of the commencement, November, 1965.
Smelting process starts from so called reverberatory furnace smelting with green charge and ends as the products like wire bars, billets and cakes.
Technical features of the plant are economical, efficient use of energy in every form, labor saving mechanization and automation of the processes, extensive smoke control to avoid air pollution, better working conditions with sophisticated safety andhygiene measures, etc.
The history and details of the project is described in the following report by the author who were active in the project as the chief metallurgist.