Sidenor 2020 Corporate Report

38 Corporate Report 2020 | What we do Sidenor has started an Innovation Project with the aim to pursue its diversification strategy, inside and outside the steel business. The opportunity analysis was initiated within the collaborative framework of a multidisciplinary team from various areas such as Sales, Industry, Corporate Development and R&D. We see Innovation as a transversal process: new areas of the Company are integrated in the various projects while these are under way; once the projects are finalised, all areas of Sidenor are part of them. Innovation prompts us to develop products and services which are required, and will be required in the future, by our customers and markets in general, but also to be a company that is safer, more efficient, more competitive and more respectful of the environment. Sidenor Research and Development, a non- profit company which has been working at fostering Sidenor’s competitiveness and sustainability for over 35 years, contributes to these objectives. Sidenor R&D, which has an excellence laboratory, is a metallurgical and technological reference both at internal and external level. In 2020, it defined further innovative solutions in the production process as well as in the sustainable development of new products for steel components manufactured by its strategic customers, optimising manufacturing processes in terms of safety, quality and profitability. Product In a further effort to generate a higher added value for our markets, the R&D area, and in particular the Product Development area, has established collaboration frameworks with our key customers. New products were presented, with the aim to strengthen their position in their reference markets, by combining the development of new high-performance qualities and the optimisation of transformation costs in the manufacturing technologies implemented in the processes of Sidenor’s customers. Process In the process area, Sidenor’s excellence R&D centre has focused its efforts on the strategic improvement of quality, costs, productivity and circular economy, both in the development and use of monitoring tools and development of associated control models and in the definition of new manufacturing processes adapted to our customers’ requirements. Innovation: towards diversification Final Sectors Eolic Automotive Truck Oil & Gas Off-Highway Others