Czech Republic-based steelmaker Liberty Ostrava has announced that in 2021 it achieved record results in production since the takeover by Liberty Group in 2019. The smelter managed to take advantage of last year's strong demand for steel and steel products and to compensate for the negative effects of the extreme rise in energy prices with the extraordinary volume of its production.
In 2021, the company produced 2.28 million mt of liquid steel, up by 33 percent, and 1.93 million mt of pig iron, increasing by 35 percent, both year on year. In the given year, the company’s final products output increased by almost 30 percent to 2.16 million mt, due to a number of operational and technical improvements in which the company has invested a total of over CZK 2 billion in the past two years. Particularly, flat steel production amounted to 680,000 mt and long steel production totaled 1.5 million mt, up by 84 percent and 19 percent year on year, respectively.
In the next eight years, Liberty Steel Group plans to invest billions of crowns in the transformation of Liberty Ostrava into a carbon-neutral green steel producer. A key element of the 2030 carbon neutrality program will be the replacement of the steelworks’ four existing tandem furnaces with two hybrid electric arc furnaces.