‘People are at the heart of everything I have achieved’.

Pavel Šedivý, Executive Director, has been working at LIBERTY Ostrava for an incredible 39 years. He joined the Ostrava smelter after school, started as a wagon cleaner, worked his way up through a number of management positions and was appointed Executive Director of the company last December. “If I didn’t have my colleagues around me, it wouldn’t matter who runs the smelter. I wouldn’t get anything done,” says Pavel Šedivý.

Read his deeply person interview with Positiv Business & Style magazine.

Forty years with one company is a lot. What do you think has changed at the smelter over that time?

The smelter works completely differently from when I started, we are incomparably more energy efficient and, above all, much more environmentally friendly. For example, over the eight years I was at the investment department, we invested 10 billion in environmental projects. When I started working at Ostrava, the smelter was emitting 33,000 tonnes of dust a year. Today, we’ve reduced that by almost 99 per cent! That’s a huge drop. Overall, it’s moved both our smelter and the city forward. Ostrava wouldn’t be as green and clean as it is today, and it’s been a huge pleasure to be part of that.

But that’s not all. Liberty has its own big green vision. What is your specific plan?

Our vision is to become a carbon neutral crude steel producer by 2030. The plan is to invest CZK 8.6 billion, the biggest investment in the business in a generation. The key will be replacing the existing four tandem furnaces with hybrid electric furnaces. The melting process in the latter is carried out by the heat of the electric arc and thus there is no need for coke, which is undoubtedly the biggest burden on the environment.

These are huge investments. Won’t this put Liberty at a disadvantage compared to competitors from outside the European Union, where the environmental bar is lower?

Yes, overall we are already at a disadvantage as Europe industry is greener than the rest of the world. while competing with imports from other countries with much lower environmental standards is very difficult. That is why I think the European Union should do much more to support its major strategic industries, protecting the thousands of jobs which depend on them, as we make this massive transformation. We must make sure that we are self-sufficient. 

I understand that you are already trying to prepare for the future. You have signed a cooperation with the Secondary School of Electrical Engineering in Ostrava, where you will have a whole class of electricians. Are you following this personally?

I’m following it and I’m giving it a high priority, as is the GFG Foundation here in the Czech Republic. Hybrid furnaces are a question of money, but what is even more important is that we must have qualified people, without them it will never work. I’ve been trying to push this message through some of our local vocational secondary schools for a long time because I see the lack of qualified people as the biggest potential threat to our industry.

I understand that young people are more likely to see themselves as influencers, but I still believe that there are many among them who will have the desire to help transform our industry into the green engine of the future – steel is going to be critical to our future, from the core of sustainable buildings to the wind turbines needed for renewable energy. Our new educational and community programmes are now focusing on engaging with that new generation of green steel workers.

And do you think young people find your efforts to be carbon neutral appealing?

I’m sure they do. I see it when I meet them and talk to them. Five years ago, we started building a youth department. We picked them at schools. Today they know the plant well, they know the employees and they are given different tasks in our technology. And you know what? They want to stay with us, they want to participate in the modernisation. They’re close watching our journey towards carbon neutrality and the move towards making steelmaking even significantly cleaner than it currently is, and I’m very pleased about that.

You still seem to have a lot of drive, can you transfer that to your existing employees?

I think so. I’m always positive, you’ll never see me depressed. And at the same time, the people around me help me tremendously. I’ve known everyone for years, I’m on the same wavelength with most of them. Our goal is to keep this place up and running, give people jobs and keep progressing. It’s great to be able to rely on my colleagues for that. If I didn’t have them, it wouldn’t matter who was in the Executive Director chair, I wouldn’t get anything done.

Liberty wants to be green, is her boss green? Do you still ride your bike to work?

I’d love to ride, but I can’t juggle it with my daily duties. So, I mainly ride at the weekend, even in wintertime. I live in a great place as we have a house close to the river. After a few meters I get to the terrain where I always have a choice of three routes to take. And that’s the most relaxing thing for me.