Steel Industry Defends IF Induction Furnace Technology
Thai steel industry defends induction furnace technology as legally compliant and safe, saying a recent building collapse was caused by construction defects, not the steel material itself.
Amid heavy criticism of IF (induction furnace) steel in recent weeks, Amorn Ungsobporn, vice chairman of the Thai Induction Furnace Metal Casting Association, has come forward to address the facts from another angle.
Amorn raises a striking question: why is technology that is legally compliant and meets Thai Industrial Standard specifications being attacked so heavily? Is this really about using regulations to eliminate competitors and allow certain capital groups to monopolize the market?
1. Blaming IF Steel for Building Collapse
Amorn states that attempting to link the building collapse to IF steel is unfair and demoralizing to workers. Thailand's Prime Minister and four leading national institutions (the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, AIT, Chulalongkorn University, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, and the Structural Engineers Association) have concluded clearly that the cause was "defective construction techniques and design" — specifically, reinforcement steel embedment depth at shear walls falling short of legal requirements — and had nothing to do with the steel material itself. The project contractor also issued a statement confirming construction followed approved plans and materials passed all inspection and approval checks. The Structural Engineers Association tested steel samples from the rubble and confirmed they met standards at 95 percent, proving the IF system was not the root cause of the structural failure.
2. Compliance with Standards Yet Discredited
The reality is that the Thai Industrial Standards Institute issued a research report as early as 2015 confirming that IF technology has the capacity to produce steel meeting Thai Industrial Standard specifications. Current law (Thai Industrial Standard 24-2559) explicitly requires IF furnace facilities to have scrap steel sorting systems and steel purification processes such as ladle furnaces or desulfurization and dephosphorization procedures. Operators following the rules completely have reduced sulfur to as low as 0.002 percent.
From a metallurgical engineering perspective, IF furnaces operate at melting temperatures of 1,500–1,700 degrees Celsius, so nitrogen gas does not decompose and steel has higher toughness and earthquake resistance. This differs from electric arc furnaces (EAF), which exceed 3,000 degrees Celsius and risk nitrogen contamination of 80–120 ppm, creating brittle "rock candy fracture" steel.
3. Distorting News About China's IF Ban
Amorn explains that State Council Document No. 6 from 2016 has been distorted. The reality is that the Chinese government aimed to cut excess steel capacity of 100–150 million tons, so it ordered a sweeping shutdown of all "unregulated mills" (ditiao gang) that evaded taxes and failed to meet standards, combined with overall steel industry capacity reduction. For mills that operated correctly to standard but had to close for excess capacity reduction, the Chinese government paid compensation. They did not specifically ban IF technology as claimed to justify trade barriers. Today, advanced IF furnaces paired with ladle furnaces remain widely used in the international market and in China's steel sector.
4. Non-transparent Rules Punishing Law-Abiding Operators
The clearest sign of unfairness and governance concern came on 4 August 2025, when the technical committee (Committee 84) set up to urgently revise standards included multiple representatives from competing industries but had "no representative from the IF furnace association or operators — not even one." Committee 84 voted 7–6 to restrict IF furnaces in steel bar production, with the majority voting to focus on production process rather than furnace type and pointing instead to product specifications.
