Italy-based steelmaker Acciaierie d'Italia, formerly known as Ilva, will produce 8 million mt of crude steel per year and return to full employment by 2025. In addition, it will achieve environmental sustainability in steel production with the transition from coal to hydrogen and with the use of electric furnaces, all with a total investment of €4.7 billion. These are the cardinal points of the plan that was presented yesterday, December 13, at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development by Acciaierie d'Italia's president Franco Bernabè and CEO Lucia Morselli. The meeting was also attended by Italian state-owned agency Invitalia, economic development minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, labor minister Andrea Orlando, the governors of the Puglia and Liguria regions, representatives of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Ministry of the South, and local metalworkers unions.
The plan, the economic development ministry explained in a press release, pursues "the objectives of economic sustainability to obtain a competitive product in the market, in terms of both quality and cost, which will allow expected production levels of 8 million mt to be reached by 2025. By this date, investments in innovative technologies, some of which have already begun, will already allow a reduction of about 40 percent of CO2 and 30 percent of fine particles."
Compared to the previous ArcelorMittal plan, which was calibrated over five years and envisaged production partly through blast furnaces and partly with an electric furnace, that of Acciaierie d'Italia (public-private partnership between ArcelorMittal and Invitalia) has the goal of achieving complete decarbonisation at the Taranto plant in ten years. The novelty is the reorganization of the plant through hydrogen. As in the previous plan, a company for the management of the DRI plant that will power the electric furnace will be established.
"The plan that was presented is realistic but not simple. The transition to hydrogen and the management and consequences as regards employment aspects need time," commented minister Giorgetti. The minister added that, for this reason and in light of the fact that "the picture outlined today is more complicated than we expected, we need trust and hope on the part of all those who sit at this table today. The government will do its part, it will continue to work with a constructive spirit by putting order in a package of rules and tools that allow to manage the green transition of a strategic sector such as that of steel."