Global industrial leader GFG Alliance has announced that Liberty Steel Group, which altogether employs 30,000 people in 10 countries, will be incorporated by the end of this year through a merger of GFG’s upstream and downstream steel manufacturing, mining and distribution businesses around the world. The company said that it aims to be carbon-neutral by 2030 through a single global company with 18 million mt of rolled steel capacity annually.
Liberty Steel Group will be the eighth largest steel producer outside China, with operations stretching from Australia to continental Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, and it will have annual sales of approximately $15 billion.
Liberty’s GREENSTEEL strategy aiming a carbon-neutral future focuses on using electric arc furnaces to recycle scrap steel, rather than producing all material from scratch, as well as using renewable sources of energy. Liberty’s plants already recycle three million tonnes of scrap steel annually, with investment underway in electric arc furnaces in the UK, Australia and the United States. The group’s strategy will encompass a balanced model, rather than a silver bullet – including transitioning our existing blast furnaces towards electric arc furnaces, investing in new electric arc furnaces and piloting new clean technologies around the world. It will aim to tackle emissions at its sites by exploring technologies such as Direct Reduced Iron, carbon capture and storage.
Liberty Steel Group will include operations drawn from Liberty House in the UK, Liberty Steel Continental Europe, Liberty Steel USA, Infrabuild and Liberty Primary Steel and Mining Australia. It will be organised in three divisions: Liberty Primary Steel, Liberty GreenSteel and Liberty Engineered Steel.