Group-wide, some EUR 400 million were spent in the past ten years on investment projects having a clearly allocable environmental impact.
New environmentally relevant investments rose from EUR 40.7 million in the business year 2017/18 to EUR 66.2 million in the business year 2018/19. This increase stems mainly from two major projects in the Steel Division and the High Performance Metals Division, respectively.
Environmental investments voestalpine AG
Cumulative, in millions of euros
In the Steel Division, Blast Furnace A (the Group’s largest individual blast furnace) at the Linz, Austria, site saw a complete overhaul. More efficient filter systems were introduced and extensive supplementary steps were taken to ensure blast furnace gas cleaning and dedusting. The rehabilitation work on the areal of the division’s Linz-based coking plant that has been contaminated since World War II has been ongoing since 2011. The work to remove highly contaminated areas in the eastern portion of the areal by way of so-called hot spot excavation continued in the business year 2018/19. Additional investments were made at the Corpus Christi plant in the United States to suppress dust emissions.
The High Performance Metals Division has lowered its specific energy consumption by acquiring a new forging press with automated system controls and by putting in place new, energy-efficient furnaces.
In the Metal Engineering Division, additional steps have been taken to suppress dust, for instance, by misting the production lines near the blast furnaces in Donawitz, Austria, as well as by installing dust-suction equipment at the annealing furnace in Kindberg, Austria.
The Metal Forming Division invested in the expansion of its in-house generation of hydropower and thus the production of renewable energy, which the voestalpine Group has already pursued in the past at several sites. During the reporting period, a more powerful turbine was installed in one of the existent hydroelectric plants, and the power plant on the whole—all the way to its control systems—was brought up to specifications. Steps aimed at using electromobility as the intracompany mode of transportation were accelerated in a number of this division’s companies.
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