The factories of the steel group SSAB are located in the far north of Sweden and Finland. The intended new owner of Tata Steel in IJmuiden has big plans for the production of fossil-free steel.
Peter de Waard
In the city of Luleå – pronounced Luleo – the sun sets at 2.10 p.m. today. “In a month, it won’t be light here until 11am and dark again at 1pm. And then I am talking about a clear day. “Otherwise it will remain dark for 24 hours, says Dutchman Dirk Koolwijk who has a travel agency there for people who want to see the northern lights or take sledges, skis or snowshoes for trips through the breathtaking white world.
Luleå with 70 thousand inhabitants is located in Swedish Lapland on the Gulf of Bothnia. In addition to the annual National Snowball Throwing Championships, one of the largest and oldest steelworks of SSAB – SVenskt Stål AB, or Swedish Steel NV – is located there. SSAB also opened the very first pilot plant in the world to produce fossil-free steel there on 31 August.
Coal will be exchanged as a raw material for green hydrogen that is generated with water and wind power that are available here on a large scale. The pilot plant Hybrit, which stands for Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology – Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology, only emits H2O (water) and no more CO2 (carbon dioxide). “At the moment the plant will run on natural gas for a while, but it should be hydrogen early next year,” said Mia Widell, spokesman for SSAB. In 2025, fossil-free steel must be delivered to the car factories for the first time. No one doubts that many automakers will also score in order to market their products even more environmentally friendly. “By 2045, all steel we make must be fossil-free,” she says. This means that the CO2 emissions of Sweden will be reduced by 10 percent and of Finland, where SSAB also produces steel in Raahe, by 7 percent. Steel production is still one of the most polluting industries in the world due to the use of coal. SSAB is at the forefront of innovation. Even without hydrogen, SSAB is already one of the most sustainable steel producers. The iron ore does not have to come from far. This is mined nearby by the state mining group LKAB and can be scooped out of the mines in the blast furnaces, so to speak. The Swedish state is also a major shareholder of SSAB through that company, just like the Finnish state. They keep a finger on the pulse and also facilitate the factories. For example, the state has opened up Luleå with railway lines that lead on the one hand to the Norwegian port city of Narvik and on the other hand to Borlänge, located in central Sweden. In this city, the semi-finished products from the north are further rolled out.
In addition, SSAB has a fully integrated steel factory in Oxelösund, south of Stockholm, where special products are made such as high-strength and weather-resistant steels. 2,100 employees work here.
SSAB has a much longer history than Hoogovens. One of the company’s predecessors was already producing steel in 1878. The current concern dates from 1978. It is no longer dependent on its own construction and car and machine production. In 2007 Ispco was acquired in the US and in 2014 Ruukki in Finland, expanding its sales area. But with 9 million tons of steel per year, it is still one of the smaller steel mills in the world. Together with Tata Steel Netherlands it would reach 16 million and thus end up in the top 20 in the world. The largest is Arcelor Mittal with a production of almost 100 million tons. Whether fossil-free steel production is competitive remains uncertain. Preliminary calculations show that steel production with hydrogen is 20 percent more expensive than with coal. “But that price difference will diminish if the CO2 taxes go up immediately,” says Widell. The factory in IJmuiden, for example, wants to capture and store the CO2, which will also be very expensive.
Thanks to the green electricity, the location in the far north of Sweden is ideal, despite the lack of daylight and temperatures dropping to 30 degrees below zero. Facebook also discovered that. It opened its first European data center in Luleå, because low temperatures are also favorable for this. The city’s technical university is at the service of both Facebook and SSAB. And perhaps directly from the steel company in IJmuiden.
