The Indian company Tata Group plans to invest €65 million in the design of a hydrogen production line at its Tata Steel plant in IJmuiden, the Netherlands. Eurometal reports about it. - GMK Center

The investment will make steel production at the steel plant more sustainable by replacing current blast furnaces with direct reduction units and electric furnaces by 2030. It is planned to make steel production at the Eimeiden plant carbon-neutral by 2045.

Tata Steel Nederland signed contracts with three companies – McDermott, Danieli and Hatch – for the further technical preparations of the hydrogen route.

While the new facilities are under construction, the blast furnaces will be in operation. This guarantees continuity of supply throughout the period.

In addition, the company announced the completion of modernization of hot and cold rolling mills. This will allow the steel plant to improve the quality of steel and develop new brands of products necessary to meet the needs of the automotive market. Also, the automotive hot-dip galvanizing line will be updated within the next six months.

Tata Steel Nederland has already signed a memorandum of understanding with Ford in Europe. The company has agreed to supply green steel to the car producer Zeremis after the plant switches to production based on ecologically clean hydrogen.

The agreement makes Ford the first customer committed to offtake the green steel that Tata Steel plans to produce.

While we are transitioning to become a producer of large quantities of high-quality green steel, we can already supply our customers with a significant amount of high-quality low-CO2 steel today and thus make their product offering more sustainable. By aligning our sustainability ambitions with customers like Ford, we can create an early market for green steel, speed up the transition and meet the expectations of society at large.

Hans van den Berg, Tata Steel Nederland chairman

As GMK Center reported earlier, Tata Steel Europe in the first half of the 2022/2023 financial year reduced steel production by 7.4% year-on-year –  to 4.84 million tons. Sales volume decreased by 10% y/y – to 4.02 million tons.