Whyalla steelworks to axe up to 600 jobs as blast furnace closure looms

For sixty years, the blast furnace at Whyalla stood as the beating industrial heart of a South Australian city built in its shadow. On Monday, administrators and government officials conceded what economics had long been signalling: the furnace was beyond saving, and no sum of public investment — ultimately exceeding one billion dollars — could reverse the verdict of time and deterioration. Up to 600 workers now face an uncertain future, even as the broader steelworks site remains open to the possibility of reinvention under new ownership.