BUSINESS ROZHOVOR

A Cleaner Environment

for the Next Generation, Automation

and Ever-Increasing Workplace Safety.

This Is the Future of GO Steel

The Frýdek-Místek company GO Steel, also known simply under the original name 'Válcovny plechu',

celebrates 190 years since its foundation this year. However, in an interview with the company's director

Ivo Chmelík, we looked primarily to the future, both for GO Steel and the steel industry as a whole.

Mr. Director, tell us how do you see the future

of GO Steel, what are your plans for long-term growth?

Of course, everyone in the steel industry today sees

the opportunities and dangers of 'green steel'. Its

dangers lie primarily in the cost of changing production

technology. Industrial large-scale production of green

a period of next ten or more years, the steel mills will have

to put their profits into these new technologies. So the

question is whether it will be interesting for the owners

of the steelworks to spend almost all their profit on new

technologies for a few years with the view that they will

not earn more afterwards and the investments will not

have acceptable financial payback. For this reason, it will

also depend a great deal on the European Union - they

have set these new rules and will have to provide some

subsidies to go with them. Of course, we are not only

steel producers, but we also live in this environment with

our families. We also want for our future generations to

have a better life, to live in a cleaner environment. So it is

a big challenge for us to find a way how to do it.

are trying to reuse all the heat

“weWegenerate

here - today we are

already using more than 90%

of the residual heat.

”

steel is completely different from the production of

conventional steel and the technology has not yet been

mastered here. This is a huge investment, because

completely new plants will have to be built. For the last

hundred years, blast furnaces, coke ovens, steel furnaces

have been improved - and all these technologies will

have to be replaced by completely new ones. Over

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We are investing heavily in infrastructure, for example,

we are trying to reuse all the heat we generate here

- today we are already using more than 90% of

the residual heat. We have recently completed a major

water saving investment, replacing pipes dating back to

1954, which will mean about 25% savings on water for

us. Last year we refurbished all of our lighting, saving

over 60% in costs of electricity for the lighting. We also

changed the heating system in the annealing furnaces,

where we saved more than 20% of energy. These are

our current savings. In the future, we want to focus on

saving electricity, change to green energy, i.e. replacing

natural gas, which we use for many technologies, with

green electricity or hydrogen, and partly on energy

self-sufficiency. At the moment we are building a new

photovoltaic power plant and have plans to build more

on the roofs of our buildings. We are also focusing on

labour productivity, because there are fewer and fewer

people on the labour market and we need to replace

human labour with automation. When people retire

today, we are no longer able to fully replace them

because it is difficult to get employees to work around

the clock. Automation is the solution, which is why we

want to focus on it in the future.