CELSA Group advances in the circularity of its sustainable steel and lays the bases to offer traceability to its customers
- The company launches a program to complete the circularity of its steel and to drive global and interconnected action throughout its value chain.
- CELSA Circular Steel Program relies on new products, partnership opportunities, certifications, investments, and innovation as basic pillars.
Barcelona, June 22nd, 2023.- CELSA Group, Europe’s leading company in the manufacture of circular and low-emission steel, has launched its “Celsa Circular Steel” program to accelerate the transition towards the complete circularity of its sustainable steel, and the reduction of emissions, extending at the same time, the benefits of sustainable steel production to the entire value chain of steel production, including customers, stakeholders, and suppliers.
The company, which has been producing steel for more than 50 years using electric arc furnaces and from scrap, wants to be a lever for transforming the sectors they supply and the economy in general into a circular economy.
CELSA Group starts from the essentiality of the material it produces, steel, which is present on a day-to-day basis. Steel is strategic and necessary for key sectors of the economy as an indispensable material in construction and in capital goods, infrastructure, transport, and energy. In this last field, the company’s role is especially strategic because steel is necessary for the construction of most renewable energy infrastructures, essential to meet the decarbonization objectives that Europe has set.
Among other aspects, the Circular Steel programme is based on the close collaboration of all actors involved in the value chain, such as suppliers, producers and customers, with the aim of ensuring that emissions are quantified and reduced, including reducing and avoiding the use of fossil fuels and taking measures to reduce social and environmental impacts.
CELSA Group’s Circular Steel program it is composed of five basic pillars: new products, partnerships, certifications, investments and research and development.
New products
With the Circular Steel program, Celsa offers its customers and partners to work hand in hand in improving the circularity of the company’s product offer and to be able to offer customized products, increasing the percentage of recycled content within the steel production process. The vertical integration upstream of CELSA Group gives it a competitive advantage in terms of traceability of raw materials, scrap management, and local supply among others, and makes evident its marked strategic role for the fulfilment of the common objectives in decarbonization and circularity.
“From CELSA we want the industrial network that we have woven around our product to be the one that drives the change towards total circularity”, explains the president of the company, Francesc Rubiralta, who adds that “our program is not only to make CELSA Group more circular, but also to support and encourage global and interconnected action throughout the steel value chain”. “It is not a project of internal change, but a long-term program, to achieve a sectoral change that today is strategic,” he concludes.
Partnerships
In the field of collaboration with associations, Celsa Group develops all opportunities for cooperation with customers, suppliers, and other interested parties to reduce the environmental impact of its value chain. Among other actions, the company has promoted, together with other partners, the Global Steel Climate Council (GSCC), to create a coalition of steel producers and other stakeholders committed to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 and establishing a global steel standard that leads to a cleaner future.
Certifications to improve the traceability of sustainable steel to the customer
CELSA Group already has the main certifications for quality management, the environment, energy and health and safety. The new program will introduce more certifications to easily demonstrate to the client the composition of the company’s steel products and therefore the amount of material reused in its clients’ projects and products. In this sense, the company has created a label that incorporates the traceability data of recycled steel that guarantees that the products it supplies are 100% recyclable and that they are manufactured with 100% recovered steel scrap, which reduces the customer’s environmental footprint.
Investments to complete emission reductions and efficiency improvements
The company plans to invest up to €250M in the Celsa Circular Steel program until 2030, a significant part of which will be financed thanks to public funding for the development of innovation, sustainability, and industry 4.0 programs.
The investment will focus on reducing natural gas consumption in heating furnaces, with funds committed to study more sustainable alternatives such as the use of green hydrogen.
Innovation participating in a lot of projects with reference partners
CELSA Group has developed its own circular economy projects such as Hymet, which applies new technologies to increase the reuse of by-products of steel production using hydrogen and collaborating with other actors such as in the ECOSWAP initiative to increase the adoption of electric motorcycles by deploying an improved battery sharing ecosystem.
Other outstanding projects are SEALAG, together with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, which tries to develop new materials for marine regeneration from by-products of the steel and agri-food industries; and the Alchimia project that brings together the steel sector, universities, and research institutions to unleash the full potential of artificial intelligence in steel production, while supporting growth, in line with the European Union’s Green Deal Industrial Plan.
Model that facilitates growth capture
CELSA Group’s production model, based on circularity, allows the company to capture the future growth of the steel sector, which has led it to record results two years in a row. In 2022, CELSA Group closed the year with a turnover of €6,084 M and an EBITDA of €867 M, figures that far exceeded those of 2021, which were, in turn, historic.
More information at: https://celsagroup.com/en/celsa-circular-steel-programme/
About CELSA Group
CELSA Group is the first European producer of low-emission circular steel with the largest circular supply chain in Europe. It recycles ferrous scrap to produce steel in electric arc furnaces, using the most sustainable and energy-efficient technology.
The company is made up of 6 business groups and has 120 work centers, 7 steel mills, 12 rolling mills and 45 recycling plants, as well as transformation and distribution companies, which generate direct, indirect, and induced employment for more than 70,000 professionals. It is present in Spain, France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland, Italy, and Ireland.
The group works to solve the greatest systemic risks on the planet: the depletion of resources and the fight against climate change. To this end, it has set itself the objectives of reducing itsCO2 emissions by 50% and reaching 98% circularity by 2030 and completing its circularity and being a Net Positive company in 2050.
More information:
Laura Sabaté
Tel. +34 616 95 20 66
l.sabate@romanrm.com
