Sustainability and business come together in AFV Beltrame Group's projects and in Chalibria, the green brand launched by the Vicenza-based group and presented at an event on Tuesday, March 28, at the Chervò Golf Hotel & Resort in San Vigilio Pozzolengo (Brescia).
"We are demonstrating that sustainability can and must be fully integrated into business, strategy, culture and the entire value chain," explained Barbara Beltrame, vice president of Confindustria and head of communication and marketing at AFV Beltrame Group, speaking at the opening of the event. "To be or not to be sustainable is no longer a choice: survival in the marketplace depends on it,” she stressed
In the future of AFV Beltrame Group there is sustainable steel and transparent communication with customers and stakeholders, as Enrico Fornelli, the group's commercial director, also emphasized.
This was followed by Gianmaria Zanni, group energy and decarbonization manager, who went into detail about the Chalibria project, a name derived from the Latin chalybs (iron and steel) and libra (balance): "It is not just a label, but it is our way of understanding sustainability, and it means decarbonization."
To coordinate work toward achieving carbon neutral steel, Beltrame has devised five pillars: energy consumption, water, CO2 emissions, waste, and safety: and a three-step pathway: measurement, planning and targets.
From the current average of 0.57 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per ton of steel produced, the group aims to reach 0.15 ton by 2030. To achieve this there are 45 projects, some of which have already gone into operation, and carbon credits to offset the remaining emissions.
During a panel discussion, the acceleration of the emissions reduction process is, according to Carlo Carraro, rector emeritus and professor of environmental economics Cà Foscari University of Venice, "indispensable to cope with climate change, and will also bring important economic benefits to steel companies, because it reduces the costs that the sector will have to bear when it is obliged to purchase emission permits, in addition to the risk of increased financial costs for less green companies generated by the new policies of the European Central Bank."
"The challenge of the coming years for the steel industry is precisely that of fostering a process of transformation towards production sustainability, a key element for maintaining high competitiveness at the international level," stressed Regina Corradini d'Arienzo, Simest’s managing director. "For this reason, she continued, Simest is ready to support investments for all the companies in the supply chain, in order to be at the side of the entire production cycle that includes many strategic SMEs. We are aware that the success of the Italian manufacturing industry in the world cannot disregard sustainable development and the ecological transition of the national steel sector." This was stressed repeatedly by all the speakers, including the two representatives of AFV Beltrame Group, Raffaele Ruella and Carlo Beltrame, who spoke specifically about the direction in which they are moving: a €200 million investment over five years, a plan based on energy efficiency, reducing consumption, renovating reheating furnaces, improving efficiency, increasing the use of renewable energy instead of fossil energy, circular economy practices, substituting natural materials for recovered materials with polymers, reusing white slag instead of lime. "And also, hydrogen solutions that are not yet applicable, but the connection with research centers and universities goes in this direction," Ruella added.