Tata Steel plans low CO2 steel-making technologies in UK, Netherlands

Tata Steel is working on a plan for transition to low carbon technologies for making steel in the UK and the Netherlands.

In October 2021, Tata Steel completed the process of separating Tata Steel UK and Tata Steel Netherlands as two independent companies from Tata Steel Europe.

Both, Tata Steel UK and Tata Steel Netherlands have been developing detailed plans for transition to low CO2 technologies in line with the company's goal to produce CO2-neutral steel by 2050 in Europe, company's CEO & MD T V Narendran and Executive Director & CFO Koushik Chatterjee said.

"In Tata Steel Netherlands, we plan to gradually phase out our blast furnaces and coal over the next 10 years by replacing them with a combination of Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) technology based on hydrogen, and electric furnaces," the executives said in the company's annual report for 2021-22.

In the Netherlands, the company has a capacity of 7 MTPA.

According to the company, Tata Steel UK also produces steel through blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnace routes, and has an annual capacity of 5 million tonne per annum (MTPA).

Speaking on the India operations, the company said, "Based on our assessment of the opportunities in the Indian market, we will calibrate our growth plans and timing for implementation. We are currently focussed on completing our expansion project in Kalinganagar to create a state-of-the-art 8 MTPA site."

During 2022-23, Tata Steel will be commissioning a pellet plant, which is 70 per cent complete, and the phase-wise commissioning of the cold rolling mill complex, starting with the pickling line and the cold rolling mill.

Both are margin expansionary projects as part of the overall expansion project in Kalinganagar. This expansion in Kalinganagar is focussed on higher value-added products including plates, coated products, advanced high strength steels and products for newer applications.

As part of its mid-term plan, capacity addition in India using scrap Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) route will also be set up to convert the collected and processed scrap into steel.

"There are also plans for shifting from metallurgical coal to cleaner fuel like natural gas, upscaling pilots of CCU (carbon capture units) and hydrogen based steel-making in India. In FY 2021-22, a 5 TPD (tonne per day) pilot plant was successfully commissioned at Jamshedpur to capture CO2 from blast furnace gas. We have also successfully tried continuous injection of Coal Bed Methane (CBM) gas in one of our blast furnaces," the company said.