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30 July 2024

Supporting New Zealand’s climate transition

A partnership between New Zealand Steel and New Zealand industry and government, announced in 2023, has opened the door to a lower-carbon steelmaking process through installation of an electric arc furnace (EAF). Projected to be commissioned at New Zealand Steel’s Glenbrook plant in 2026, the EAF will reduce the country’s carbon footprint and contribute to BlueScope’s global goal to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The steel industry is focused on low emissions steelmaking

Steelmakers continue to transform their operations to reduce their carbon footprint and maintain steel as an essential ingredient in the global transition to a low carbon world. Depending on each country’s access to technology, materials, policy and funding, there are varying combinations of options for making lower carbon steel. Where available and viable, these can include greater use of scrap steel and renewable energy, and transition from high-emission blast furnace ironmaking and basic oxygen furnace steelmaking (BF/BOF) technologies to lower emission direct reduced iron and electric arc furnace (DRI/EAF) technologies. You can read more about these technologies on our bluescope.com website - steelmaking and at www.worldsteel.org.

BlueScope already has an EAF at its North Star BlueScope plant in North America, one of its three major steelmaking plants across the globe. This case study gives a snapshot of our project to build an EAF at our New Zealand Glenbrook plant.