Liberty Steel Group – a new force in steel with a carbon neutral vision

Liberty Steel Group – a new force in steel with a carbon neutral vision

GFG Alliance’s metals arm Liberty Steel plans to merge into one global company called Liberty Steel Group, setting sights on carbon-neutral operations by 2030

Liberty Steel Group will include operations drawn from Liberty Steel UK, Liberty Steel Continental Europe, Liberty Steel USA, InfraBuild and Liberty Primary Steel & Mining Australia.

Our Executive Chairman shares his view about the announcement

Watch a video of Sanjeev Gupta, our Executive Chairman and CEO, talking about this latest step in Liberty’s evolution.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

So over the last few years Liberty has grown rapidly across the world, almost in every continent. It is time that we came together as a group to harness the force which is Liberty Steel.

So we have divided that into three groups. We have the Liberty Primary Steel Group. This essentially is all our mining businesses and all our blast furnaces, all our primary steel production facilities around the world; currently in Whyalla in Australia, in Galați in Romania and in Ostrava in Czech Republic. So that becomes our first group.

The second group, which has been something which we’ve been doing from the very beginning is our GREENSTEEL business which is essentially recycling businesses, collecting, processing steel scrap, electric arc furnaces around the world and then producing steel and distributing steel in those furnaces. So that’s our GREENSTEEL business.

And the third business is all our independent rolling mills, all our downstream businesses, all our engineered steel businesses, all of that comes together in the third divisions. So those are the three divisions.

Globally we will form these three as global verticals and have each one with its own governance, its own leadership, its own resources, its own plants and projections going forward.

The motivation for this grouping, one is of course, given that we’re one of the largest steel producers in the world now, that we need to harness that force and we need to bring together everybody, we need to have shared experiences, shared expertise and learn from each other and basically be able to cross-pollinate across the world.

But also one of the callings came from the financial community or our stakeholders at large about having a more transparent one balance sheet, one set of financials, one set of governance and all of that. So this is an attempt to basically bring everybody together so we can project ourselves very clearly.

GREENSTEEL has been our core business model from its very inception. When I bought my first steel plant it was with the view to set up an electric arc furnace there to recycle steel. The concept is actually very, very simple. We have amassed a mountain of steel globally. Over the last 100, 150 years there has been a huge accumulation of steel globally. Eventually this has to be recycled.

So what our focus is, that instead of making new steel we will recycle steel and, where possible, we will do this with renewable energy and we will try to go downstream and make value added products which are required in our markets.

GREENSTEEL has been a key objective for us anyway, putting a challenge that we will be carbon neutral by 2030 as one of the largest steel producers in the world is a very, very ambitious, brave and difficult challenge to achieve but it’s something which I believe we can achieve. We’ll achieve it by converting as many of our primary steel operations over time into arc furnaces. We’ll build electric arc furnaces alongside all our blast furnaces and one by one, slowly over time, transition towards electric arc furnaces.

We’ll do it by investing more and more in renewable energy. We have three mega projects on right now. We have the largest solar farm in Australia being built in South Australia, in Whyalla. We have the largest subsidy-free onshore wind farm being built in Glenshero in Scotland. We have the world’s first and biggest conversion of a coal-fired power station to use end of life waste in Wales. So these sort of initiatives, again, will help us achieve our objective of being carbon neutral by 2030.

And, of course, the other point is you are always going to have a carbon footprint that ensures that what you do in reverse as well, how do you sequester carbon, whether it’s carbon capture and storage, whether it’s planting trees, whether it’s investments in agricultural roots to basically take carbon back from the atmosphere into the planet. These are the sort of things which all together will become our ambition to fulfill a carbon neutral company by 2030.

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *