Sidenor 2021 Sustainability Report. Non-financial information statement

32 Sustainability Report 2021 | About us Sidenor Aceros Especiales S.L.U. is undergoing a process of innovation, launched at the beginning of 2020, with the aim of pursuing its diversification strategy, searching for opportunities inside and outside the steel business. The opportunity analysis is carried out in a transversal perspective, within the collaborative framework of a multidisciplinary team from various areas such as Sales, Industry, Corporate Development and R&D. In the area of high added- value product development, Sidenor is pursuing its innovation process both in terms of process and product. 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.  In the area of product development, we strengthened cooperation relationships with our key customers. Projects are defined with a view to strengthening 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 Sidenor customers’ processes.  In the area of process, Sidenor is pursuing its efforts towards 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. Sidenor is one of the main European special steel suppliers for the car sector, as well as major sectors such as power generation, oil&gas, heavy machinery construction and capital goods. Its subsidiary Sidenor Investigación y Desarrollo S.A., a non-profit company which has been working to foster Sidenor’s competitiveness and sustainability for over 30 years, has an excellence laboratory and is a metallurgical and technological reference both for Sidenor and its customers. In 2021, Sidenor R&D 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. Sidenor considers market and competition technological surveillance as another significant line of work in the area of R&D&i, where European multi-partner projects, both within the RFCS programme (Research Fund Coal and Steel) and Horizon Europe, allow us to be up to date with the most innovative emerging technologies and industrial practices. In addition, Sidenor participates in the national and European technological environment by carrying out research projects in cooperation with centres of excellence, customers and steelmaking companies. At national level, its cooperation Innovation: towards diversification