Category: Latest Updates

Thyssenkrupp Materials Services has acquired data analysis and data science company Westphalia DataLab GmbH. With the purchase, the materials distributor expects to strengthen its expertise in digital supply chain services and accelerate the development of concrete solutions, Kallanish hears.

As part of its “Materials as a Service” strategic development, tk Materials is investing in new digital business models, particularly in supply chain services. “The potential for digital solutions to make supply chains more resilient and reduce CO2 emissions is huge. Against the background of the dynamic market environment, we are focusing on innovations here and opening up new business areas,” says Ilse Henne, the company’s chief transformation officer.

As an example, the firm cites forecasting solutions used to improve service levels for customers and reduce their inventories with the help of data analysis along the supply chain. One project in this area is the Artificial Intelligence-based solution “Pacemaker”, which is currently being further developed.

Westphalia DataLab was founded in Münster in 2017 and offers its customers consulting and development services in the field of data science. In 2020, the company won the German Artificial Intelligence Award.

Christian Koehl Germany

Outokumpu is starting a cooperation with Klöckner & Co by delivering the first coil made of emission-minimised stainless steel from its “Circle Green” product line, launched in June 2022. From 2023 onwards, the companies intend to supply larger quantities of the product, Kallanish hears.

Outokumpu’s Circle Green is classified in the so-called “Prime” category in Klöckner’s new categorisation for stainless steel. Through this collaboration, the distribution group will be able to significantly expand its portfolio of CO2-reduced materials, services, and logistics under the new “Nexigen” umbrella brand.

Outokumpu claims that its Circle Green production was the first of its kind globally for stainless steel with very low emission levels, and that it is now on sale in the market. “After securing significant quantities of CO2-reduced steel at an early stage, Outokumpu’s first CO2-minimised stainless steel coil is another important step for our company in the right direction,” says Klöckner chief executive Guido Kerkhoff.

Christian Koehl Germany

Decarbonising the global steel industry with hydrogen is possible and probably inevitable, but it will not be easy, according to presenters during Kallanish’s Hydrogen for Steelmaking webinar hosted on 7 December.

The global steel industry accounts for about 6-7% of global emissions, pointed out Kallanish Index Services managing director Steve Randall. Eliminating those emissions purely with hydrogen will be a challenge on two fronts – capacity and cost.

Nel Hydrogen chief executive Håkon Volldal said tackling the capacity side of the problem will involve a ratcheting up of next-generation capacity while meeting extant needs with proven technologies. Lower costs will follow as technology improves.

“If you invest hundreds of millions of euros in a DRI facility, you want to make sure the plant is actually working,” he commented.

Nel’s Herøya facility in Norway currently has a capacity of 500 megawatts. It is in the process of doubling that, and the facility may eventually be ramped up to 2 gigawatts. Sometime in the first quarter, the company expects to announce a US site for a 4GW facility.

SSAB vice president of sustainable business and public affairs Thomas Hörnfeldt added that his company’s HYBRIT joint venture anticipates shipping its first commercial product by 2026. The HYBRIT pilot plant produced its first fossil-free steel in 2021.

Crucially, fossil-free steel is identical to traditional steel once downstream processing begins, he pointed out. It is the shedding of carbon emissions during the crude steel production process that is truly revolutionary.

ArcelorMittal technical head of government affairs and climate change Stéphane Tondo anticipates the majority of EU steel production will be decarbonised by 2030. Getting there, however, will require massive investment in both green energy and electrolyser capacity.

Of the 157 million tonnes currently produced, about 60% – or 94mt – is suitable for conversion to the hydrogen process.

That will require 37-60GW of electrolyser capacity, 296 terawatt-hours of green electricity, and about €180 billion ($189.38 billion).

Such a massive effort will require a new slate of government policies to ensure an affordable, available, and stable hydrogen supply, Tondo said. “[Current] regulation is not helping the supply of hydrogen in a stable way for the steel industry,” he added.

Dan Hilliard USA

Sales of passenger electric vehicles in Germany rose 50% year on year in November to a record high 102,600 units and an overall market share of 39.4%, according to data from auto industry association VDA.

The market share was up from 34.4% a year ago and 32.5% in October to the highest share on record.

EV sales were also 51.2% higher month on month.

Of the volume, 57,980 units were battery EVs, up 44% year on year, while 44,580 were plug-in hybrid EVs, up 60%, the data showed.

With demand for EVs generally moving higher, battery raw material prices have been strong.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed seaborne lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide at $77,000/mt CIF North Asia and $82,500/mt CIF North Asia Dec. 6, up 128% and 160%, respectively, since the start of 2022.

Meanwhile, overall new vehicle registrations climbed 31% year on year in November to 260,500 units, which was up 24.9% from the previous month.

Of the monthly total, 171,200 units, or 65.7%, were German brands and the remaining 89,300 were foreign brands.

Overall new passenger car sales for the first 11 months of the year totaled 2.3 million units, down 2% year on year, although compared to the pre-coronavirus year 2019, the decline was 30%, the VDA said.

“Above all, the lack of primary and intermediate products and the high energy and raw material prices continue to have a dampening effect the market and production,” the VDA said.

Of those, 26.8% were EVs, totaling 659,200 units over the 10-month period, which was up 10% year on year.

some 280,100 vehicles were exported during November, up 26% from a year ago and rising 28.2% from October.

Exports over the January-November period rose 11% on the year to 2.4 million units.

According to the VDA, 385,700 passenger cars were produced in November, up 25% on the year and the seventh consecutive months of year-on-year gains and up 38.8% on the month.

In the first 11 months of 2022, 3.2 million passenger vehicles were produced in Germany, up 12% on the year, the VDA said, although it added that the production volume was still at a comparatively low level and was around 28% lower than pre-COVID 2019 levels.

According to S&P Global, plug-in light duty EV sales in Germany are expected to be 771,990 units in 2022 then reach 1.1 million units in 2025 and 1.9 million units in 2030.

— Jacqueline Holman

German’s steel producer Salzgitter said Dec. 5 it concluded a power purchase agreement with France’s multinational utility company Engie that’s effective at the start of 2023 and runs through end-2025.

The agreement covers the supply of 250 GWh/year of electricity during the period that will come from 10 onshore wind farms throughout Germany, including from turbines that no longer receive subsidies under the Renewable Energy Sources Act.

The PPA with Engie is an important building block for Salzgitter’s transformation into a producer of carbon-neutral, aka green, steel, and enables the producer to melt and process steel in electric arc furnaces with electricity verifiably coming from renewable sources as early as 2023, according to Ralph Schaper, the head of energy management at plate and coil products specializing steelworks Salzgitter Flachstahl.

Salzgitter aims for the highest possible availability of wind onshore electricity, said Schaper, with wind farms located in different regions with varying startup dates and technology standards.

The PPA allows urgently needed wind turbines to remain connected to the grid and new ones to be built, according to Salzgitter Senior Originator at Engie Energy Management Solutions Sarah Drevermann. “Strong signals and confidence in renewables are particularly important right now,” she said.

Salzgitter has been securing electricity supply from renewable power providers for a while, with its Salzgitter low carbon steel project, or SALCOS, at Flachstahl progressing well.

SALCOS will see the construction of two direct reduction plants and three EAFs at the mill that will incrementally replace its blast furnaces and converters. The first stage of the three SALCOS EAFs with a crude steel capacity of 1.9 million mt/year is scheduled to go live as early as the end of 2025, with full completion by 2033.

The transformation will enable steel production at Flachstahl, currently based on coking coal, to be replaced by a new hydrogen-based route and an electricity-intensive technology, which will require plentiful power supply.

Flachstahl, in Lower Saxony, is the largest steel subsidiary of Salzgitter. In 2021, it produced 4.3 million mt of crude steel and sold Eur3.2 billion worth of products.

— Ekaterina Bouckley

Romanian steelmaker Liberty Steel Galati has put its blast furnace No. 5 on a Leu18.3 million ($3.7 million) care and maintenance program until the start of 2023, it has reported.

The program is due to improve the safety, stability, reliability and energy usage performance of the furnace, the company said late Dec. 5.

Work under the program would include replacing the wear plates and two of the bell-less top, or BLT, gears, unblocking the skip pit and the BF scrubber, and cleaning the BF shaft and top platforms.

“The timing of the program, with steel demand across Europe impacted by macro-economic issues, will allow Galati to make the improvements to its production processes without impacting customer delivery,” Liberty Galati said.

Throughout the program, Liberty Galati said its rolling mills would remain in full production and it would continue to serve its customers as normal, while reviewing its pricing strategy to ensure its sales maintain an “effective contribution.”

Romania’s largest integrated works, Liberty Galati produced 2.35 million mt of crude steel in 2021. Its hot strip mill produced 1.62 million mt of hot rolled coil products, while the galvanizing line produced 222,000 mt and the coating line 88,000 mt.

The works, which also produces heavy plates and longitudinally submerged arc welded steel pipes, was acquired by Liberty Steel Group, part of the GFG Alliance, in 2019.

In July, Galati launched a tender process for the supply of hybrid electric arc furnace technology to its steelworks as it aims to transform its operations to produce green steel.

The transformation plan for Liberty Galati will see new hybrid EAFs replace older, more polluting blast furnace production at the works by 2025.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed domestic HRC prices in Northern Europe at Eur615/mt ex-works Ruhr Dec. 6, down 33.3% since the start of 2022.

— Jacqueline Holman

European steelmakers have been targeting higher domestic prices for hot-rolled coil, anticipating higher demand in the first quarter next year, market sources said Dec. 6.

No transactions have been reported at higher prices yet as buyers have been focused on managing their inventories by year-end. And the outlook for the start of 2023 has been mixed among market participants.

Some believe the need to restock after a couple of months of muted trading activity combined with effects from production cuts and high energy costs would push prices up.

Others think that demand from end-users would likely remain below normal rates and that stocks of the European distributors remain sufficient. As a result, a significant price rise is unlikely.

“I have mixed feelings about the outlook,” a Northern European service center source said. “I know that some people are quite optimistic, but I suspect that this could be wishful thinking and they could be confusing short-lived restocking with strong end-user demand.”

Platts assessed HRC in Northwest Europe at Eur615/mt ex-works Ruhr Dec. 6, unchanged day on day.

Offers have been reported at Eur630-650/mt ex-works, while buyers estimated tradable value at Eur610-620/mt ex-works.

A Central European source, however, said that the German mills have been still giving offers at prices below Eur600/mt ex-works Ruhr to the central part of the EU, at the equivalent of Eur580-605/mt ex-works Ruhr.

Platts assessed domestic HRC in the south of Europe stable at Eur620/mt ex-works Italy Dec. 6.

The assessment was based on a tradable value in Eur620-630/mt ex-works Italy and offers at Eur650/mt ex-works.

Platts is part of S&P Global Commodity Insights.

— Maria Tanatar

Software forge SAP and Salzgitter are intensifying their long-standing business relationship to jointly expedite the digital transformation for climate-friendly steel production at the German steelmaker.

The company will be working even more closely with SAP from now on to achieve the digital transformation of its processes, it tells Kallanish. In 2017, Salzgitter initiated the group-wide transition to SAP S/4HANA. Collaborating with SAP in the field of data analytics and sustainability is the logical next step, Salzgitter says. “The cloud solutions developed by SAP play an important part in our journey to climate-friendly steel production,” says chief financial officer Burkhard Becker.

The SAP Footprint Management product, for example, will in future help to calculate the company-wide CO2 footprint of Salzgitter. SAP Environment Health and Safety Management will meanwhile support the secure and sustainable structuring of the company’s operating processes. In addition, with SAP Analytics Cloud, the steelmaker says it is putting down the technological foundations for efficient and well-founded sustainability reporting.

“In this way, we are enabling our customers to achieve end-to-end business process transparency,” says Sven Mulder, managing director of SAP Deutschland, calling the cooperation a “pioneering project for climate-friendly steel production.”

Christian Koehl Germany

Employment of artificial intelligence (AI) has reduced the proportion of scrap in total production and improved product quality at ArcelorMittal Hamburg.

The mill started using an AI solution by Smart Steel Technologies (SST) last year to optimise the trimming process in wire rod production (see Kallanish passim). The AI-driven software combines real-time process parameters with historical production data to calculate, down to a fraction of a second, the perfect moment at which to cut the wire.

Due to the nature of the process, the quality and geometry of each wire rod is lower at the beginning and end than in the middle section, the filet, SST explains. Therefore, the head and tail of the wire are cut off with the help of shears. Trim scrap is produced as yield loss. The use of AI reduces this trim scrap by 20%. This results in savings in specific CO2 emissions as well as electricity and gas consumption, and in an overall improvement of quality, SST states.

“Previously, we cut the wire after 50 metres, for instance. The AI now determines the optimum cut length, which in this example is 35m,” says project manager Michel Wurlitzer of ArcelorMittal Hamburg.

Christian Koehl Germany