Swiss Steel varies product sorts by carbon footprint

Swiss Steel is working on solutions with customers to lower the overall carbon footprint of production, Swiss Steel director corporate strategy Robert Baron said at the Green Steel World trade fair and conference in Essen on Tuesday.

Baron spoke at the event attended by Kallanish about the group’s “Green Steel” label, filling in for chief executive Frank Koch.

Although Swiss Steel’s scrap-based production uses electric arc furnaces, without the emissions caused on the oxygen route, the finished products carry the footprint of the various ferroalloys used for special bar qualities. So, “would customers change their choice of steel types [in favour of a lower-carbon version?],” one critical listener asked.

“First of all, the customers look at the sort they need, but we do discuss how we can replace some traditional products,” Baron replied. “For example, you can replace some stainless steels with some engineering steels that have similar mechanical properties.”

Baron furthermore addressed the energy mix of the group’s three main production countries. While in Switzerland, the energy is mostly hydro power and therefore “green” by nature, France gets most electricity from nuclear plants, and Germany from coal power plants. Last year, when energy prices skyrocketed, “we shifted production from German plants to France, where the energy is subsidised to a large extent by the government and therefore cheaper,” he said.

Christian Koehl Germany