Hyundai Steel to beef up net-zero efforts with low-carbon steel brand

Hyundai Steel has renewed its commitment to achieving its carbon neutrality goal by launching its own low-carbon steel brand, HyECOsteel, the first of its kind in the nation’s steel industry.

The steelmaker said Thursday it will be ramping up marketing activities targeting automotive and shipbuilding industries around the world where calls are growing for eco-friendly efforts.

The renewed marketing push comes after the company unveiled in April its carbon neutrality road map to reduce carbon emissions by 12 percent by 2030 under its goal of achieving net zero by 2050.

“Advanced countries around the world are focusing on securing an earlier edge in the climate sector and protecting their own industries,” said Hyundai Steel CEO An Tong-il in a video posted on the company’s YouTube channel.

“Carbon neutrality is not an option but a must. We will pour resources into nurturing new growth drivers and taking another big leap as a sustainable, eco-friendly steel maker.”

As part of its efforts, the company plans to establish a low-carbon, high-quality automotive steel production system by implementing its electric arc furnace and blast furnace combined process.

The first stage of this process utilizes the existing electric arc furnaces for pre-melting low-carbon molten steel, then mixing the product into a basic oxygen furnace.

The second stage involves constructing and using Hyundai Steel’s new electric arc furnaces.

The new electric arc furnaces will be a part of Hyundai Steel's production system for low-carbon steel called Hy-Cube.

Hy-Cube minimizes carbon emissions while producing high-quality steel sheets by combining scrap metal, molten iron from blast furnaces and hydrogen-based directly-reduced iron. The company expects this will help reduce its carbon emissions by approximately 40 percent by 2030.

The company aims to have an annual production capacity of 5 million tons of low-carbon steel products by 2030, while marketing the products under the new brand HyECOsteel.

"We will proactively respond to the low-carbon product market by leveraging carbon neutrality technologies,” the company said.