17–18 JUNE 2024 | NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, USA

The global steel industry’s commitment to adaptation and innovation is as durable as steel itself. It is, as Linde plc chief executive officer Sanjiv Lamba recently noted, a hallmark.
 
 “You constantly innovate. Efficiency is right on top of your agenda. All great steel companies demonstrate that commitment,” he said from the floor at the 2024 Global Steel Dynamics Forum, which was held 17–18 June 2024 in New York City.
 
 The Forum is meant to offer a high-level, wide-ranging look at the state of the global steel industry and a window into the thinking of those who are leading it. Granted, Lamba was speaking to a room full of customers, but his observation is nevertheless reflective of an industry sprinting toward the future, given the billions of dollars invested in new process technologies, the new sustainability practices that are being introduced and responsive adaptation being made to shifting market demands.
 
 Those demands include greener steels, and Lamba argued that successful decarbonization of the industry will come by way of deployment of multiple technologies that include, but are not limited to, hydrogen.
 
 “Is hydrogen … a silver bullet that is going to solve all of the problems? I will be very honest and tell you up front, no. I’m very bullish on the role hydrogen is going to play, but it’s not the magic bullet,” he said.
 
 “There isn’t enough renewable energy in the world to support the aspirational demand of green hydrogen. There just isn’t. And you know what? It just got a lot tougher. Why? Because we are going to be building AI data centers like there is no tomorrow. So the same amount of renewable energy is now going to be split between hydrogen electrolyzers demand and data centers. Guess what? I think the data centers might just get a little bit of preferential treatment.”
  
Steel Deal

Decarbonization was a prominent theme of the 2024 Forum, and one to which many of the discussions were pegged. However, the elephant in the room was Nippon Steel Corp.’s planned US$14.9 billion acquisition of United States Steel Corporation.
 
 The merger of a unionized and iconic American manufacturer with an overseas behemoth certainly hasn’t been without controversy, but U. S. Steel chief executive officer David Burritt defended the deal and offered assurances that it would come to fruition.
 “Nippon is clearly the right choice, and I’m extremely confident that were going to be able to close this deal this year.”
 Burritt told the audience that deal is a win for all stakeholders.
 
 Employees — union employees in particular — will benefit, he said, as Nippon Steel has committed to honoring the basic labor agreement and will forgo any layoffs. Moreover, the company will invest US$1.4 billion in U. S. Steel facilities.
 
 At the same time, customers win with the enhanced competition a combined company will bring to the North American market.
 “Customers love (this deal),” Burritt said. “Customers love it so much that they’ve sent letters to the Department of Justice about how they think this deal with strengthen competition, not diminish competition.”
 
 And the country wins from a technological standpoint, he said. Nippon Steel, after all, is a company with 30,000 patents and long-standing expertise in integrated steelmaking, Burritt said. It also is a company with a US$500 million R&D budget.
 
 “As far as I can tell, that’s more than the steel companies in the United States combined in a year.”
 
 “They’re experts in integrated mills and they want to invest here,” he said.

New Business Venture

Of course, one person who would much rather they didn’t is Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Lourenco Goncalves, who, with the support of the United Steelworkers union, tried to buy U. S. Steel, but was rebuffed.
 
 Goncalves has been sharply critical of U. S. Steel’s decision to sell to Nippon Steel, but speaking at the 2024 Forum, Goncalves was more reserved in his comments. He did, however, reiterate previous skepticism over the deal and repeated that Cliffs would not act as a backstop for U. S. Steel.
 
 “The offer doesn’t exist anymore,” he said, adding that the company is focusing its attention on other things, such as recasting its Middletown, Ohio, USA, mill as a leading example of how to decarbonize an integrated plant and launching a new downstream business venture: electrical transformer manufacturing.
 
 Goncalves said that with the typical lead time for an electrical transformer extending to 37 weeks in the U.S., Cleveland-Cliffs sees an opportunity. So, he said, the company is repurposing its idled West Virgina tinplate mill, a relatively lower risk investment that will provide a new outlet for its electrical steel and return scores of union employees to work.
 “The decision has been made. We are doing this,” he said.
 
 And at the moment, Cleveland-Cliffs is going it alone, he said, although it remains open to a partnership.
 
 “If a joint venture partner comes along for the ride and allows us to work at our speed, that’s the best scenario,” Goncalves said. “But there is no partner at this point, so we are going it alone,” he said.
 
 Cleveland-Cliffs idled the mill following the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (ITC) rejection of tariffs on imported tinplate from multiple countries. The ITC disagreed with the U.S. Department of Commerce and ruled that domestic producers had not been harmed by imported tinplate.
 
 Goncalves, however, argued otherwise. As far as he’s concerned, he is out of the tinplate business.
 “I will never produce tinplate again,” he said.
  
Setting the Bar

But if all goes according to plan, Dave Stickler will be producing rebar in Arkansas by next year. His latest startup, Hybar LLC, is building a 630,000-ton mill not far from the last mill he helped to launch, Big River Steel.
 
 Hybar intends to tap growing demand for construction steel and sell rebar to independent fabricators who sometimes find themselves having to buy from producers that also own competing downstream rebar fabrication business.
 
 Stickler said Hybar already sold one-quarter of its planned capacity and, at the time of the conference, was closing in on a deal to sell another 25% — all with a year of construction still to go.
 
 “That gives not only me, not only our investors, but our employees and our banks great comfort that we’re really on to something here,” Stickler said.
 
 The mill is scheduled to begin production in 2025, and it will be able to meet 6% of forecasted U.S. and Canadian consumption, Stickler said. The company could meet even more of that, too, in the future.
 
 “Our plan is to build three or four more of these mills — all environmentally sustainable,” Stickler added.
  
Green Premium

Other companies, however, are working toward sustainability by building on assets they already have. For instance, SSAB Americas is trialing heats of hydrogen-reduced sponge iron produced at the company’s HYBRIT pilot plant in Sweden.
 
 SSAB Americas president Chuck Schmitt said the first of those heats, consisting entirely of the hydrogen-reduced iron, were to have taken place in June at SSAB’s electric arc furnace mill in Iowa.
 
 Schmitt said the outlook for green steels, and particularly plate, looks quite good in the U.S. He said SSAB is seeing robust demand for plate — demand he expects will persist on the back of Inflation Reduction Act-driven investment in wind energy as well as road and bridge rehab.
 
 “All obvious opportunities for offering a low-emission steel,” he said. “Quite a number of global companies in automotive construction and agriculture and rail have a very strong interest in pursuing a lower carbon footprint.”
 But are they willing to pay for it?
 
 Yes, said POSCO Holdings chairman Chang, In-Hwa, arguing that consumers have demonstrated a willingness to pay for higher-priced sustainable goods.
 
 “Consumers are already practicing sustainable consumption. Because they are concerned about the environment as well as their health, they’re already purchasing organic foods and electric vehicles, so this is already sustainable consumer practice,” said POSCO chairman, “A green premium is a must for a sustainable future,” he said through an interpreter.
 
 However, Steel Dynamics Inc. chief executive officer Mark Millett said he was not so sure and suggested that European steelmakers might be in danger of pricing themselves out of the market.
 
 Millett said energy costs are already high in Europe, and, in addition, billions of dollars in investment is being made there now to move the continent’s steelmakers to where their U.S. counterparts already are in terms of CO2 intensity.
 
 “Someone has to pay for that,” he said. “We all can hope there is going to be a green premium, but eventually when the market forces take over (and more green steel is made), I’m not so sure it’s going to be as big as one would hope.
 
 “At the end of the day, (European steelmaking) is going to be incredibly expensive compared to the U.S.,” he said.

>GSDF24 Attendance List