ArcelorMittal Announces The Acquisition Of Voestalpine’s State-Of-The-Art HBI Facility
ArcelorMittal Announces The Acquisition Of Voestalpine’s State-Of-The-Art HBI Facility. Africa’s largest steel producer ArcelorMittal has announced that it has announced a majority stake in Voestalpine’s state-of-the-art HBI facility in Texas.
ArcelorMittal CEO, Aditya Mittal, said in a statement, “This is a compelling strategic acquisition for our company. It accelerates both our progression into producing high-quality metallic feedstock for EAFs and our global decarbonisation journey. The facility is world-class and is ideally located, with its own deep-water port. There is also unused land on the site which provides interesting options for further development.”
Mittal continued to say, “ArcelorMittal is already one of the world’s largest producers of DRI. This acquisition will further strengthen our position and guarantee security of supply to AM/NS Calvert, while our experience will bring significant value to the asset. DRI is a feedstock which has a very important role to play in our decarbonisation ambitions, as we have announced plans to construct DRI facilities at several sites across Europe and in Canada. Today’s transaction therefore represents an important further step in our climate action journey. Finally, I would like to thank the executive management team at voestalpine and look forward to developing a strong partnership with them.”
The state-of-the-art plant, which was opened in October 2016, is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It has an annual capacity of two million tonnes of HBI, a high-quality feedstock made through the direct reduction of iron ore which is used to produce high-quality steel grades in an electric arc furnace (‘EAF’), but which can also be used in blast furnaces, resulting in lower coke consumption. HBI is a premium, compacted form of Direct Reduced Iron (‘DRI’) developed to overcome issues associated with shipping and handling DRI.
