Day: 29 August 2026

The Technical University of Graz, Austria, on Thursday announced the inauguration of a railway testing laboratory which it says is unique in Europe.

The Railway and Infrastructure Laboratory (RaIL) will be able to test rail wear over their service life, among other criteria. The lab is the latest major investment of the university’s Institute for Railway Infrastructure Design. The institute’s research complements the activities of Austrian steelmaker voestalpine, which produces rails and other railway components.

One of the institute’s current research projects focuses on lighter steels for trains, Kallanish learns from Austria’s chamber of commerce, Wirtschaftskammer Österreich (WKÖ). Graz is developing harder steels with less weight. While harder steels are more difficult to weld, the institute is also developing corresponding welding technology in parallel, WKÖ explains on its website.

As an example, the chamber refers to locomotives of type Taurus, which have a weight of around 86 tonnes, and the Austrian railway operator ÖBB runs a fleet of 384 units.

The introduction of the Truck Tax Act in the Netherlands will mean additional transportation costs for Dutch and foreign trucks when passing through the country.

The Royal Dutch Steel Federation, Koninklijke Staalfederatie, is supporting its members with calculation patterns to obtain an understanding of the truck levy.

The truck levy entered into force in July and applies to Dutch and foreign vehicles with truck owners paying per kilometre.

A truck of Category Euro 5 is charged a levy of €0.236/km ($0.30) according to European emission standards. The levy applies on highways, and on some provincial and municipal roads. Each truck must have its own toll box on board that works in the Netherlands.

National steel distributors federation Staalfederatie has raised awareness among its member that the introduction of charge will have an impact on logistics processes, transport rates and cost price calculations within the steel industry.  It has established a working group to work out a practical translation of the consequences of the levy, and developed a model cost calculation, for members to gain insight into extra costs.

Staalfederatie tells Kallanish that it is up to the partners in a transaction how to deal with the costs. They might be added in a price-per-tonne, or price-per-order, or not handed down at all, depending on the individual relationship to the customer.

According to Dutch national government, Rijksoverheid, the truck levy contributes to a level playing field for international freight transport. On the dedicated Truck Tax Act website, it notes that the levy is broadly in line with the systems of other countries, such as Germany, Belgium and Denmark, but also the Dutch approach differs on several points.

Germany-based automaker BMW Group has announced that, together with its partners, it has demonstrated through the Car2Car research project that significantly higher recovery rates for automotive materials can be achieved through advanced sorting and processing technologies, with particularly strong results for steel.

Under standard market processing conditions, the project achieved an overall Car2Car rate of six percent across five material groups. With additional processing and optimized sorting routes, the rate increased to 51 percent. The project defines the Car2Car rate as the share of materials from an end-of-life vehicle that can theoretically be recovered at sufficient quality for reuse in new industrial applications. For steel specifically, the recovery rate increased from one percent to 81 percent.

Additional sorting step reduces copper contamination

According to BMW, one of the main challenges in recycling end-of-life vehicle steel for high-quality automotive applications is contamination by copper originating from cables, connectors and other components.

The Car2Car project demonstrated that an additional sorting step can selectively reduce copper content in steel scrap, improving its quality sufficiently for use in new flat steel products for automotive applications.

Steel coils produced using the improved scrap were subsequently tested and introduced into industrial production. At BMW Group’s Leipzig plant, more than 100,000 series-production components were manufactured from the material for use in vehicles.

Further infrastructure investment still required

The project also showed that further progress will require additional investment in dismantling, sorting and recycling infrastructure. Advanced measures tested during the project included improved pre-sorting, modified shredding, classification, sensor-based sorting and more precise separation of aluminum alloys. BMW noted that high-quality closed-loop recycling is currently more advanced for metals than for plastics and glass. For these materials, further development is still required to meet the automotive industry’s quality requirements.

The findings will be used in BMW Group’s further development of circular vehicle concepts and its Design for Circularity approach. The company also stated that the results could provide input for future regulatory frameworks, including the European End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation, by identifying the technical and economic conditions required to achieve higher recovery rates and more closed material loops.

Spain-based welded steel pipe producer Tuflesa, part of the Bornay Group, has commissioned Germany-based plantmaker SMS Group to modernize the sizing section of its ERW-RD-240 pipe welding line at Las Torres de Cotillas near Murcia.

New sizing stands to improve accuracy and productivity

Under the project, SMS Group will replace four worn sizing stands and the associated changeover equipment, while retaining the existing main drive, base frames and automatic stand-change cars to limit investment costs, labor requirements and downtime. The new stands, which will be delivered fully assembled, wired and piped, are expected to restore dimensional accuracy, improve productivity and enable Tuflesa to manufacture new products while meeting tighter tolerance requirements.

Supplied by SMS Group in 1998, the ERW-RD-240 line produces structural tubes with maximum dimensions of 240 mm for round products and 200 x 200 mm for square products, including tolerance-critical tubular solutions for the solar energy sector.

Installation scheduled for summer 2027

The equipment replacement is scheduled to take place during Tuflesa’s planned summer shutdown in 2027, with SMS Group also supervising commissioning and supporting the subsequent production ramp-up.

This will be the second modernization carried out by SMS Group on the line following the upgrade of its forming and welding sections in 2024. The latest order included the commissioning of a new RD 40 high-frequency tube welding line in 2021.

Germany’s machinery and equipment industry recorded a slight decline in exports in the first half of 2026, as geopolitical tensions, US tariff policies and persistently weak demand in China continued to weigh on foreign trade, according to German mechanical engineering industry association VDMA.

German machinery and equipment exports decreased by 0.8 percent year on year in nominal terms to €99.3 billion in the January-June period. On a price-adjusted basis, exports declined by 2.5 percent. Meanwhile, machinery imports increased by 2.2 percent year on year to €47.9 billion.

Strong June performance limits H1 decline

Anke Uhlig, VDMA economic expert, stated that relatively stable export activity in the second quarter, combined with a 6.8 percent year on year increase in June, limited the decline recorded for the first half.

However, geopolitical tensions, US tariff policies and continued weakness in business with China remained significant pressures on the sector.

Exports to China fall 13.8 percent

Germany’s machinery exports to the US increased by 0.5 percent year on year in the first half, despite the negative impact of US tariff policy and the strong euro. By contrast, exports to China fell sharply by 13.8 percent, continuing the weakness seen in this market in recent years.

Exports to the European Union increased by 1.3 percent, with the bloc retaining its position as the German machinery industry’s largest sales region with a 45.9 percent share of total exports. Among major EU destinations, exports to France increased by 3.6 percent and those to the Netherlands rose by 5.1 percent, while shipments to Italy declined by 0.5 percent. Elsewhere in the EU, Denmark and Sweden recorded particularly strong increases of 22.5 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively. Outside Europe, exports to India rose by 11.1 percent, while shipments to Canada increased by 10 percent.

The US remained Germany’s largest individual machinery export market with a 13.1 percent share, followed by China with 7.1 percent and France with 6.9 percent.

Steel and aluminum tariffs weigh on outlook

VDMA expects uncertainty to remain elevated during the second half of 2026. According to the association, US tariffs on steel and aluminum derivatives, as well as the possibility of further tariff measures, are creating additional pressure on business with the US.

Meanwhile, the decline in exports to China, which has continued since 2022, is expected to persist amid weak demand and increasing competitive pressure from Chinese suppliers in international markets.

Within the EU, weak order intake from eurozone countries is also weighing on the outlook.

VDMA stated that further free trade agreements and a more efficient EU single market will be important for German machinery manufacturers seeking to diversify their export markets amid continuing trade and geopolitical uncertainty.