EUROMETAL brought together Steel Traders in Düsseldorf
EUROMETAL brought together Steel Traders, Steel Stockholding Distributors and Steel Service Centers in Düsseldorf.
This event allowed participants to interact on topics of relevance to European Steel Distribution, such as the CBAM, EU Steel Safeguards and other trade defense measures, the Economic Outlook for Europe, potential discontinuities in Steel Supply Chains, the EU-US Global Arrangement on Steel and Aluminum and the world steel excess capacity.
The event had participants such as Prof. Roland Döhrn from the University Duisburg-Essen, Dr. Benedikt Zeumer from McKinsey & Company, Xiaoyi Tang from Dentons Europe LLP, Luciano Giua from OECD ( Matthew Watkins from CRU, Stanislav Zinchenko from GMK Center, Simon Göß from carboneer and Alexander Siryk from Metal Consulting International.
The event ended with a panel discussion on Challenges, Threats and Chances for Steel Trading moderated by Colin Richardson from Argus Media and the panelists Alexander Julius – Macrometal, Julian Verden – Stemcor, Tayfun İşeri – Yisad / Çolakoğlu, Jose F. Gasca – AMSCI / Metrading and Maruan El Daghma – Primex Steel Trading.
The EUROMETAL Steel Trade Day Düsseldorf was attended by 90 participants.
SSAB starts construction of EAF at Oxelösund
SSAB has started construction work on an electric arc furnace at its plant in Oxelösund, which will be carried out by SMS group, Kallanish learns from the Swedish steelmaker. It highlights the event, attended by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, as a historic milestone for the Swedish industry and for the green transformation to fossil-free steelmaking.
SSAB earlier took a decision to transform its entire Nordic production system by around 2030, and this year took a decision to invest SEK 6.2 billion ($599 million) in an EAF and related raw material handling.
SMS’s scope of supply includes a 190-tonne alternate current-electric arc furnace (AC-EAF) capable of processing various raw materials, including fossil-free direct reduced iron or hot-briquetted iron, and scrap.
This includes automated features such as the slag handling and eccentric bottom tapping (EBT) operations. Also part of the supply is advanced electrode control X-Pact SynReg, which, together with advanced robotics applications, such as the X-Pact Sampler, ensures operational safety as well as better precision and productivity without human intervention, SMS explains. With an upper shell diameter of 9.3 metres, the new EAF is one of the largest installations in the world for similar applications, it adds.
“We are now embarking on the large-scale construction and transformation of SSAB’s Nordic production system,” says SSAB president Martin Lindqvist. “The conversion to an EAF will mean that Oxelösund alone can deliver a reduction of around 3% in Sweden’s CO2 emissions,” says SSAB Special Steels head Johnny Sjöström.
Christian Koehl Germany
Sarralle to build ArcelorMittal’s new EAF in Spain
ArcelorMittal has contracted Spanish technology supplier Sarralle Group to build a new electric arc furnace at the Gijón works. The project is part of the steelmaker’s decarbonisation plan in Spain and will substitute one of its blast furnaces in Asturias, Kallanish notes.
Construction works will start early next year. The facility is expected to commission in the fourth quarter of 2025, ArcelorMittal confirms. As part of the project, Sarralle will also install a dust collection system as well as a waste heat recovery system to maximise the EAF’s energy efficiency.
The furnace will have an annual capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes of low-emission steel. Output will be mainly destined to long products consuming sectors such as rail transport. The investment will place the plant in a highly competitive position, particularly in sectors with strict carbon footprint criteria for public administration contracts, the steelmaker observes.
“This investment will allow us to produce high value-added rod and wire rod, consolidating a sustainable future for our activity, with a process that incorporates the highest safety standards,” comments ArcelorMittal Spain Long Products chief executive Jordi Torné.
According to Sarralle’s ceo, Elias Gonzalez, this is a very special contract for the technology firm since it is the first decarbonisation project in Spain to be carried out using Spanish technology. “It is an extremely important step for the future of the steel industry in our country, oriented towards very high added-value products,” the executive notes.
Todor Kirkov Bulgaria
Czech steelmaker Liberty Ostrava receives protection order to restart blast furnace
Czech steelmaker Liberty Steel Ostrava has been awarded court protection against action from one of its main creditors while it seeks to restructure, a spokesperson for the company said Nov. 30.
“Liberty Ostrava can confirm that a specific creditor moratorium against its main energy supplier was granted yesterday morning. This will allow the business to finalize and execute its restructuring plan, which will involve the restart of blast furnace number three and the ramping up of the steelworks which aims to ensure the business is positioned for long-term success for the benefit of its employees, creditors, and stakeholders,” the spokesperson said, without giving further details. “The moratorium will allow the steelmaker to negotiate more favorable power prices and does not affect the day to day running of the company,” the spokesperson said.
Liberty Steel Ostrava is part of the multinational GFG Alliance.
As part of the moratorium procedures at the Ostrava court, Liberty Steel Ostrava had to prove it is solvent and that the overall business is viable and could be restructured without insolvency procedures, the spokesperson added.
Liberty Steel Ostrava previously announced that it had “hot idled” its only operating blast furnace from Oct. 23 due to a Europe-wide downturn in demand. The furnace was originally expected to re-start after two weeks but the spokesperson announced in a Nov. 15 email that its resumption would depend on finalizing a “sustainable operating model for the [Liberty Steel Ostrava] business.”
The main union at Liberty Steel Ostravo, Kovo, warned Oct. 17 that the steelmaker’s management and owner want to operate the furnace in a “stop start mode” responding to demand. When uneconomic, the blast furnace could be idled with steel products bought in from outside for further processing at the rolling mills and other facilities, it added. The union said such a strategy made little sense for an integrated steelmaker also operating a coke plant, steel plant, rolling mill and Liberty Engineering Products Ostrava (Lepo) subsidiary.
Liberty Ostrava is the Czech Republic’s biggest steelmaker with annual production capacity of around 2.0 million mt. It produces rolled products, tubes, and flat products with main customers in the construction, engineering, and oil and gas sectors.
Author: Chris Johnstone
H2Green steel on schedule to produce low-carbon steel by early 2026
H2 Green Steel is on schedule to produce its first low-carbon steel made using hydrogen by the end of 2025 or the beginning 2026, before ramping up output, in a process that could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 95%, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Joel Ridderstrom told S&P Global Commodity Insights on the sidelines of the Resourcing Tomorrow Conference in London this week.
The global steel industry is one of the world’s largest emitters of CO2, representing approximately 7-8% of global emissions.
H2 Green Steel’s project, located in the Boden-Lulea region in northern Sweden, includes a giga-scale green hydrogen plant as an integrated part of the steel production facility.
Use of hydrogen rather than coal in the production of steel represents one of the main routes for the industry to reduce its CO2 emissions, with H2 Green Steel pioneering the technology in Europe.
“In northern Sweden we really rely on the hydropower backbone. So Sweden and Norway, the northern parts of those countries, it’s really now a natural resource comparable to oil. It’s just a massive battery that exists in those locations. So I mean, there’s no coincidence that we’re located in the Arctic Circle,” Ridderstrom said during the conference, adding that not only will this lower the costs of hydrogen production, but it will also eliminate intermittent power.
“You have the power available and you have the hydropower backbone to support continuous production,” he said.
During a panel discussion at the event, industry participants agreed that the industry is moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels, but they underlined the expense of this.
According to CRU analyst Paul Butterwork, constructing a hydrogen direct reduced iron facility would cost around $1.3 billion, compared with about $800-850 million for a more traditional blast furnace with its own power station, or $400-420 million for an electric arc furnace with its own power station.
“So that’s a big, big shift,” he added.
Ridderstrom agreed that low-carbon steel adds a cost premium, putting this at around Eur150/mt, but said that the industry is already evolving.
He added that companies including carmakers, white goods manufacturers and constructors are already closing offtake supply agreements to secure low carbon production.
Demand for low carbon steel is increasing. Platts, part of S&P Global, launched its own low steel carbon assessments in May this year.
Platts assessed Northwest European hot-rolled carbon-accounted coil up Eur5/mt on the day at Eur770/mt ($840.147/mt) ex-works Ruhr Nov. 30.
The assessment was calculated in line with the sum of the Platts daily carbon-accounted steel premium (CASP) assessment and Platts daily hot-rolled coil price assessment in Northwest Europe.
Author: Annalisa Villa
EU steel-using sector output detaches from consumption
The thesis was delivered by Roland Döhrn, professor of economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, in a presentation on Thursday at distributors association EUROMETAL’s Steel Trade Day in Düsseldorf.
Döhrn compared the relation between steel consumption and production by steel users as it used to be before 2021, and how it has developed since. According to his findings, the relationship was relatively stable from 2014 and 2021, with minor deviations that were balanced over time. But “after 2021, this correlation disappears; we see increasing production at steel users but decreasing steel consumption by them,” Kallanish heard Döhrn say at the event.
He referred to the EUROMETAL meeting in Porto last spring, where this observation was discussed among participants, but without a clear clue on the cause. “We were wondering if it has to do with stock cycle, and had other ideas, but did not find an answer,” Döhrn said.
For one thing, it could have to do with production patterns: lightweighting efforts would result in lower steel intake, as would a change of materials for certain parts. In construction, the share of existing property refurbishment may have gone up versus new building, which primarily needs steel. Import patterns, too, will play a role. Steel users seem to be increasingly importing finished parts and components from overseas.
If Döhrn’s observations indicate a trend, “the future production of steel users will be less reflected in the steel market,” he concluded.
Christian Koehl Germany