Diversified miner Anglo American has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Japan-headquartered Nippon Steel to develop solutions for lower-carbon steelmaking.

As an iron-ore supplier to the steelmaking industry, Anglo deems it important to help shape a greener future for the backbone of global infrastructure – steel.

“By working together, we can drive system-level decarbonisation and pave the way for sustainable steelmaking, underpinning the steel industry’s full potential as an enabler of society’s wider economic prosperity and social development,” says Anglo marketing CEO Peter Whitcutt.

The MoU states that the companies will research ways to optimise premium lump ore produced by Anglo to decrease emissions through the traditional blast furnace steelmaking process.

The project will also focus on studying the use of Anglo’s iron-ore in the more carbon-efficient direct reduction iron (DRI) steelmaking method. DRI is estimated to generate significantly lower emissions than the more prevalent steelmaking routes of blast furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces.

Whitcutt explains that Anglo’s product portfolio focuses on future-enabling metals and minerals that are critical to the transition to a lower-carbon world.

“Working with our customers is one of the cornerstones of our efforts to reduce emissions across our entire value chain – the majority of which are associated with the downstream use of our products in steelmaking.”

Nippon and Anglo’s relationship spans more than five decades, which bodes well for this endeavour to further combine the groups’ expertise.  

In October 2021, the publication of Anglo’s Climate Change report set out an ambition to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 50% by 2040, building on a pre-existing commitment to reach carbon neutrality across its operations by the same year.

The steel value chain was recognised as key to achieving this ambition, with the majority of Anglo’s Scope 3 emissions linked to materials sold into the industry.

The report outlined a holistic approach to decarbonisation, predicated across multiple levers, including developing high-quality products to feed into more efficient and less carbon-intensive production processes, driving efficiency and minimising emissions and working with customers to accelerate decarbonisation efforts.

In turn, Nippon announced its carbon neutral vision 2050 strategy, which states a goal of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

The company’s efforts will include developing a large-scale electric arc furnace by 2030, in addition to its already operating smaller-scale ones and expanding the use of hydrogen in steelmaking.

Nippon plans to speed up the development of a direct hydrogen-reduction steelmaking process for commercialisation before 2050.