The blast furnace remains an important part of modern iron production. Modern furnaces are highly efficient, including Cowper stoves to pre-heat the blast air and employ recovery systems to extract the heat from the hot gases exiting the furnace. Competition in industry drives higher production rates. The largest blast furnace in the world is in South Korea, with a volume around . It can produce around  of iron per year.
This is a great increase from the typical 18th-century furnaces, which averaged about  per year. Variations of the blast furnace, such as the Swedish electric blast furnace, have been developed in countries which have no native coal resources.
According to Global Energy Monitor, the blast furnace is likely to become obsolete to meet climate change objectives of reducing carbon dioxide emission, but BHP disagrees.  An alternative process involving direct reduced iron is likely to succeed it, but this also needs to use a blast furnace to melt the iron and remove the gangue (impurities) unless the ore is very high quality.