Inside Nippon Steel's Kashima plant: Do you want to know a secret?

“No photos!” a pouncing PR person tut-tutted. Yoko was more amused than bemused as she holstered her smartphone once more.

Colleague Yoko Manabe and I were part of a Japanese media group touring the integrated steelworks of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp at Kashima, northeast of Tokyo. We’d been mustered inside the cavernous building housing the No.1 blast furnace where the furnace house superintendent was listing the attributes of the 5,370 cubic meter giant with fatherly pride.

A diligent scribe, Yoko had taken out her phone to record the fascinating minutiae because the safety goggles, gloves, helmet, water bottle, headphone set and C02 detector we’d all been provided with were hampering efficient note-taking. Alas, photo-capable iPhones were a no-no.

Photo by Russ McCulloch

As the tour wore on, the no-pictures rule became more perplexing. To be fair, NSSMC had allowed us to capture the outside of the furnace from a bus stop for a few minutes of furious clicking. But the photo restriction seemed increasingly absurd.

I’ve toured countless Japanese steel works, smelters, coil centers, fabrication shops, and end user plants, many of which have really cool set-ups and are doing amazing cutting-edge stuff. So a reluctance to let tourists wander around taking happy snaps of intellectual property is understandable and justifiable.

And then there’s Kashima. The Kashima plant was inaugurated nearly five decades ago by the former Sumitomo Metal Industries (which Nippon Steel absorbed in October 2012 to form NSSMC). The works is spread over 8.9 million square meters and, like all contemporary Japanese mills almost entirely dependent on imported steelmaking raw materials, is built close to the sea. Today, age, sea-air corrosion, and iron ore dust have given Kashima the visage of contented decay.

As much asThe Beatlesand the Mini Cooper S, Kashima is a product of the '60s and still employs the technology of those times. Whereas far younger rivals in China, South Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere employ direct charging and casting of steel, Kashima continues to trundle molten iron and steel in a fleet of torpedo cars, the massive football-shaped vessels that contain 300-400 mt. A staffer proudly told me that a fully laden torpedo car can cover the 1.1 kms journey between the No.1 steel shop and the No.3 casting shop in 12 minutes, ignoring the inefficiency of all that loading, unloading and shunting.

Emblematic of the time-slip was Kashima’s heavy sections mill producing H-shaped construction steel. Built in 1975, a roll on a roughing mill bore the names ‘Hitachi Zosen’ and ‘Demag,’ companies that no longer exist. Demag, part of German plant builder Mannesmann Demag, was spun off into SMS Schloemann-Siemag AG in January 1999. Two years later Hitachi Zosen, NKK Corp and Sumitomo heavy Industries spun off their heavy machinery divisions into Steel Plantech.

Hence my consternation. What exactly did NSSMC fear a smartphone photographer at Kashima would capture that might advantage competitors?

Photo by Yoko Manabe

Most likely, the no-photos rule is age-old and one for which seeking exceptions is too cumbersome.

But it could also be this: The Kashima works produced first its first steel in 1971. In the year to March last year, it produced 7.6 million mt of steel, accounting for 17% of NSSMC’s total output. After the Oita works on Kyushu and the Kimitsu plant in Chiba, Kashima is NSSMC’s third-largest and accounts for 7% of total Japanese raw steel output. Last year 54% of its production was exported. As of March last year it employed just 3,130 staff, making Kashima one of the most efficient plants operating in Asia today.

That a rust-pocked 45-year old steelworks is still employing long superannuated machinery – and machinery long-since fully depreciated – with minimal staff and yet can still produce some of the world’s best steel and in large quantities is probably a secret NSSMC wants keeping.