Vale and Ternium cooperate to decarbonize steel production

Ternium signed a memorandum of understanding with Vale agreeing to seek opportunities to develop steelmaking solutions focused on reducing CO₂ emissions. Ternium’s Chief Executive Officer Mr Máximo Vedoya said “This is an important step in our decarbonization strategy as it contributes to achieving Ternium’s commitment to reduce by 20% its CO₂ emission intensity by 2030.

Ternium’s decarbonization roadmap was announced in February 2021. Vale is a key supplier in our value chain, and they share our commitment to preserving the environment. I believe we will have many opportunities to develop joint initiatives to continue decarbonizing our operations in the future.

Carbon neutrality is a goal that can only be achieved if all parts of society work together. As Latin America’s leading flat steel producer, we are going to do our part in this endeavour.”

Ternium and Vale intend to develop economic feasibility studies of potential investments in

• An iron ore briquetting plant located at Ternium Brasil facility.
• Plants to produce metallic products with low carbon footprint, using Tecnored, HYL and other technologies for iron reduction.

Vale has developed for more than 10 years a breakthrough technology to briquette iron ore products, as sinter feed and pellet feed, in a process that is simpler, flexible, less carbon intensive and capital intensive and less costly.

The briquettes would support the continued adoption of blast furnaces in its transition to a less carbon intensive process, since it could bypass the sintering process, which represents around 10% of steelmaking emissions, or be used as direct charge since it could replace lumps and pellets in blast furnaces and direct reduction furnaces.

Tecnored is a 100% Vale subsidiary focused on developing a low carbon pig iron process through the use of energy sources, such as biomass and syn-gas that emit less CO, than the coal and coke the tradition iron-making processes use. Using biomass, the path to economic carbon neutrality may be achieved in the medium term.

HYL is a low carbon iron ore direct-reduction technology developed by Ternium in Mexico. This technology, which is currently operating at Ternium’s facilities in Monterrey and Puebla, Mexico, has the ability to selectively recover CO₂ , thus significantly reducing carbon emissions compared to other reduction technologies.

This initiative contributes to achieving Vale’s commitment to reduce 15% of net Scope 3 emissions by 2035. Additionally, Vale seeks to reduce its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 33% by 2030 and achieve neutrality by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement, leading the evolution process towards low carbon mining