COVER STORY: PRIMETALS TECHNOLOGIES
PRIMETALS TECHNOLOGIES PORTFOLIO
Upstream technologies • Iron, steelmaking and eco-solutions: transforming raw material using blast furnaces and environmentally friendly technologies for primary iron and steelmaking
• Mini mills and long rolling: smaller- focused secondary steelmaking facilities refining scrap steel to the highest standards into long products mostly used in construction
• Casting and endless strip processing for the production of steel slabs or resource-efficient hot rolled sheets reduced to the lowest possible thickness. Especially used for automobiles
Downstream technologies • Hot mills for the thickness reduction of steel slabs into plates used in construction or machinery, sheet metal or rail tracks
• Cold mill, processing line and pipe mill for the strength, surface finish and tolerance improvements of smaller workpieces used, for example, in domestic appliances or pipes
• Electrics and automation: automating systems and processes for more efficient and modernised iron and steelmaking
• Metallurgical services: developing lifecycle partnerships for maintaining steel plants
let me do as much as I was capable of. So I wanted to repay that trust by exceeding his expectations.” Eventually that led to a relocation to the firm’s Munich headquarters as a foreign exchange (FX) specialist to support the roll-out of new systems and processes. “During the time I was in Munich, I was training people in Siemens – over 500 employees around the world – on foreign currency. This was to prepare them to become currency managers and take care of the currency risk for their part of the company.”
Rise of Chinese steel production As Hamon notes, in the 21st century the steel industry has been dominated by China’s rapid emergence as the world’s major producer. Once China had opened up its economy with the 1978 market reforms and grown within the World Trade Organization, subsequent industrialisation and urbanisation saw huge amounts of investment in infrastructure, buildings and machinery. “In the 1990s, China’s path in global crude steel production was negligible, but nowadays, it accounts for half the global output,” he observes. According to the World Steel Association, China’s production of crude steel (steel in its first sold or usable form such as ingots, slabs, and liquid steel for castings) in 2020 was 1.05 billion tonnes,
out of a global output of almost 1.86 billion tonnes (see Figure 1 on page 14). The share of Chinese production increased from 53.3% in 2019 to 56.5% in 2020, when overall world production reduced by 0.9%.
Chinese steelmaking capacity was helped by the government granting steel companies independence from state control and allowing them to invest heavily in expansion. In addition, the opening up of China in the 1980s and 1990s to foreign direct investment and trading partners allowed the country’s steel producers to gain vital access to modern technology.
Unfortunately, with such expansion came the coking coal that fired the furnaces – the environmental damage not having fully registered at the time. “The Paris Agreement was 20 years too late,” sighs Hamon. In December 2020, S&P Global reported that steelmaking is China’s largest consumer of energy. It cited a Ministry of Ecology and Environment report that also deemed the sector to be “the largest source of pollutants”.1
The 2000s were a “golden age” of growth for steel producers, but a rate that once averaged around 7% has now plateaued, according to Hamon. “It’s the first time
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