Sidenor Corporate Report 2019

We work to get the most out of the resources we use in order to lengthen their useful life or benefit from them. To this end, we identify opportunities throughout the entire steel production process or conduct studies in collaboration with universities, research centres and industries. Three examples are: Water Water is a key resource in steel production; it is used as a cooling agent for production equipment as well as for the product. At Sidenor, we have been working for years to ensure a preventive and responsible use of this resource, implementing the three lines of action considered by the European Union to be the best available environmental techniques in our processes: A. Separating direct cooling (dirty) water circuits from indirect (clean) ones. B. Closing circuits so as to be able to reuse most of the water. In some of our factories, the level of reuse currently exceeds 95%. C. Optimising water purification systems, which are implemented to avoid polluting the receiving environment and to reuse it internally. As an example of the latter, in 2019, a filtering equipment was introduced in our Basauri plant, which improves the purification of industrial waters in our installations and thus further ensures that the receiving environment is not contaminated. In addition, as a result of the investment performed in the Conti mill of our Vitoria plant, which consisted in improving our piping installations, we managed to reduce water consumption by 21% compared to 2018. euse and recovery 2 41 THE FIRST STEPS IN WATER MANAGEMENT WERE BASED ON PURIFICATION ONLY Water collection Uses in the process Water purification Water discharges 1 NOW, THE OBJECTIVE IS FOCUSED ON REUSE, REDUCING CONSUMPTION AND DISCHARGE Water collection 2 Direct cooling processes: continuous casting, rolling mill, etc. SEPARATION OF CIRCUITS Water ready for reuse Purging discharges from purified water deposits Water drags the dirt Water purification CIRCUITS CLOSING Indirect cooling processes: oven panels, moulds, etc. Water ready for reuse Water is heated Cooling towers