Deutsche Bahn could be Europe’s biggest customer for rails made of reduced emissions steel, but instead, lags far behind its neighbours in creating such a strategy for its railway services.
At Handelsblatt’s Zukunft Stahl conference in Essen, attended by Kallanish, Nadine Artelt, sales director at Saarstahl and ceo of Saarstahl Rail addressed the failure of Germany’s national railways to become a lead market for green steel.
Although Saarstahl is a German company, its business with reduced carbon emission steel is far bigger in the neighbouring countries than on its home turf. Last year, it signed a supply contract with the UK’s Network Rail for a minimum of 78,000 tonnes, and another with France’s SNCF of up to 170,00t/year over six years, plus others.
Meanwhile, Deutsche Bahn contracted a trial volume of 1,000t in November. “We won that tender because there was no one else who would go for a mere 1,000 tonnes,” Artelt quipped.
Max-Christian Lange of DB’s division for sustainability and environment, stated that he “would like very much to contract much bigger volumes”, but highlighted multiple hurdles in the decision process caused by the company’s network of subsidiaries.
DB’s decisions are also slowed by the responsibilities of various political bodies of its main owner, the German state. One of the unsolved questions, for example, is which public coffer to tap to pay the green premium that comes with such products.
Artelt also queried if the process of approval was getting “lost in bureaucracy”. She mentioned the billions granted by the government so far to support green steel technology, and pointed at the paradox that the government does not create a customer market for that steel where it could. She sees the annual rail demand of DB at 250,000t.
“As a German, I would value very much that Germany catches up in this regard,” Artelt said.
