Tata Steel Nederland

Tata Steel Netherlands
Quick Facts
Type	Public
sector	Industry/Iron and steel
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	IJmuiden, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1918
Emissions (All Scopes)	12.6 Megatons of CO2 in IJmuiden (2020)
Net Income	$1634 million (2020) (Tata Steel Europe)
Key People	Hans van den Berg (CEO) and T.V. Narendran (Chairman)
Subsidiaries	dochterbedrijf 1 dochterbedrijf 2

Tata Steel Netherlands, stylized as Tata Steel, is founded in 1918 as 'Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken NV´. In 1999 it merged with British Steel and continued under the name Corus. Since 2007 it is part op Tata Steel.

Company Structure

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of Tata Steel Netherlands consists of Hans van den Berg (Managing Director Tata Steel Ijmuiden), Co van Dort (CFO) and Tom Eussen (Managing Director Tata Steel Downstream Europe).

The Supervisory board of Tata Steel Netherlands consists of T.V. Narendran (CEO and Managing Director Tata Steel Ltd), Marius Jonkhart, Leni Boeren and Hendrik Adam (CEO Tata Steel Europe).

Accountant

The independent external accountant of Tata Steel Netherlands is PwC

Operations

Tata Steel is part of Tata Group, which was founded in 1868 by Jamsetji Tata in India. Tata Steel in India was established in 1907 and the first ingot of steel was made in 1912. Nowadays Tata Steel is one of the world’s most geographicallly diversified steel producers with operations in 26 countries worldwide.

In 1918 IJmuiden steelworks company (also known has Koninklijke Hoogovens) was founded. In 1999 Corus was formed through a merger of British Steel and Koninklijke Hoogovens. In 2007 Tata Steel acquired Corus. (Tata Steel in Europe Fact Sheet September 2020). Tata Steel Europe is now one of the biggest steel producers in Europe. .

Since 1 October 2022 Tata Steel Netherlands is no longer part of Tata Steel Europe and operates independently from Tata Steel UK. The Board of Directors of Tata Steel Netherlands is fully responsible for all Tata Steel Netherlands activities, which are supervised by the Supervisory Board of Tata Steel Netherlands.

Tata Steel IJmuiden received the predicate Royal at the opening of the steel factory in IJmuiden. Although the official company name is Tata Steel IJmuiden, informally some people still call it Koninklijke Hoogovens.

In 2020 Tata Steel Netherlands (TSN IJmuiden, TSN Services, TSN Technology and TSN Tubes) more than €30 million from the NOW 1 and around €45 million from NOW 2 government grants (COVID-19 related). TSN IJmuiden received 90% of the total amount.

In 2021 Tata Steel Netherlands had to refund the entire NOW 2 grant, as it turned out that the turnover loss in 2020 was above the set threshold.

Paris Agreement to Today

- Research from CE Delft reveiled that Tata Steel Netherlands made an additional profit of EUR 663 million from 2008 - 2019 by trading their excess ETS rights.

- Research showed that Tata Steel Netherlands is likely exempted from paying any ‘Opslag Duurzame Energie (ODE)’ taxes. ODE is an additional energy tax that companies pay based on their energy use. The extra tax money collected aims to prevent placing the financial burden of the energy transition on households. It is suspected that the largest polluter of The Netherlands does not contribute anything to this fund, while it is likely that it will claim large parts of it the coming years.

- Early 2021, Tata Steel Netherlands strongly opposed the phasing out of the Emission Trading System (ETS), which was point of discussion in the European Parlement in March 2021. The European Parlement was taking a position in the carbon border adjustment mechanism that the European Commission was proposing. The industries lobby was succesful as the passages concerning phasing out ETS were removed from the final resolution.

- Almost 1100 local residents and 8 foundations are sueing Tata Steel IJmuiden. They accuse Tata They accuse Tata Steel of knowingly continuing to emit highly dangerous and carcinogenic substances.

- In december 2021, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment concluded that certain emissions of Tata Steel, such as carcinogens and metal substances, cause dangerous health issues for children living in the vicinty of Tata Steel IJmuiden.

- On February 2nd 2022, the Dutch Public Prosecuter announced it will start a criminal investigation into Tata Steel IJmuiden and residual product processor Harsco Metals. It wants to investigate whether the companies have wittingly put dangerous substances into the soil, air of surface water, which potentially could result into danger to public health. The Public Prosecutor investigates, amongst other things, the role of managers in the companies.

Current Policies and Emissions

Emissions

Tata Steel Netherlands (TSN) is one of the most carbon-efficient steel companies in the world in terms of blast furnaces, but at the same time it is the largest industrial emitter of CO2 in the Netherlands. On average, its CO2 emissions are around 12.6 Mton per year.

According to Tata Steel Europe’s Annual Report TSN scope one emissions were around 4.5 Mton CO2 in 2020/2021 (including emissions from gaseous fuel and fuel for transport and business travel), 0.78 Mton scope 2 CO2 emissions (emissions from purchased electricity) and 0.01 Mton scope 3 emissions (fuel for off-site transport and business travels). It can be argued that this scope 3 reporting is too narrow, as it does not take into account the emissions associated with producing raw materials. This is a major flaw in the emission reporting of Tata Steel Netherlands, as it states in its Annual Report that it takes a holistic methodology including direct emissions plus indirect emissions associated with imported electricity (Scope 1 + Scope 2) and a holistic scope which also takes account of the emissions associated with producing raw materials (Scopes 1+2+3).

Current policies

Given Dutch industry’s commitments in the National Climate Agreement, TSN has a CO2 reduction target of 30% (approximately 3.8 Mton per year) by 2030. TSN announced its own CO2 reduction ambition of 40% (approximately 5 Mton per year) in an Expression of Principles with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. The ultimate goal is fully climate-neutral steel production. TSN is also currently investing € 300 million in Roadmap Plus to reduce other emissions in the short term.

On September 15, 2021, TSN announced that it would transition to the production of green steel through the hydrogen route using DRI technology (see box "DRI technology as a replacement for blast furnaces"). TSN made this decision together with FNV, which had previously expressed its preference for this direction.

Climate Plans

At the beginning of 2021 Tata Steel Netherlands and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate agreed in an ‘Expression of Principles’ (EoP) that Tata Steel should strive to reduce its CO2-emissions with 5 Mton in 2030

In September 2021 Tata Steel Netherlands announced that it choose to implement the ‘Direct-to-DRI – route’ (Direct Reduced Iron) plan, which was proposed by trade union FNV . This plan proposes to skip the transition plan to green steel that includes the construction of an own Carbon Capture Realization and Storage (CCUS) facility. Instead, TSN directly transitions to one DRI-plant by 2027 (combined with closing a blast furnace and a coke- and gasfactory) and a second DRI-plant between 2030 and 2040 (also combined with closing a blast furnace). At first the DRI-plant runs on natural gas, causing a reduction of 3.9 Mton CO2 with the installation of the first plant. Which is not enough to reach its own target of a CO2 reduction to 7.6 Mton by 2030. After installation of the second DRI-plant CO2 emissions will be further reduced with anotther 5.5 Mton. Between 2027 and 2040 it is expected that hydrogen will be increasinly available for the plants to run on hydrogen instead of natural gas. Depending on the availability and market prices of hydrogen both DRI-plants will be able to run completly on hydrogen, which will result in zero CO2-emissions .

It is important to remark that as long as the DRI-plants run on natural gas, there are still CO2-emissions (0.9 Mton per year per plant) that need to be captured to result in zero-emissions . Tata Steel would need to find an external facility that is able to transport and store it's CO2 emissions in order to produce green steel, as it does not have its own CCUS facility .

There are also many important conditions that need to be met in order to reach this ambition. As said before, Tata Steel's ambition to produce CO2-free steel by 2050 leans on a timely construction of a hydrogen backbone. Also, large amounts of sustainable generated energy is required to provide the energy for the electric furnaces and carbon capture systems, as long as the plants run on natural gas. This must be purchased externally, since the residual heat that Vattenfall used to provide sutainable energy for Tata Steel will disappear with the closing of the blast furnaces . Furthermore, delay of the transition to green steel is to be expected as it is dependend on a proces of granting permits by local and national government authorities, which must be accelerated to keep up with the above stated timeline . Lastly, it is to be expected that this route to green steel will have an unprofitable top, therefore requiring financial support in order to be realised .

Conclusion

Tata Steel strives to lower its CO2 emissions from 12.6 Mton to 7.6 Mton in 2030 and to 0 in 2050 by means of DRI (Direct Reduced Iron). It proposes to use green hydrogen in combination with electric furnaces to achieve this ambition. A feasibility study , conducted in september 2021, showed that achieving these goals depend heavily on a number of significant preconditions, such as financial support from the Dutch government, fast permit granting, adjusments in laws and regulation and the timely construction of infrastructure.

With the above stated ambition Tata Steel will reduce its CO2 emissions by only 40% before 2030, which is not in line with what is necessary to prevent global warming above 1.5 degrees. Moreover, the ambition depends heavily on very uncertain external processes. Lastly, Tata Steel Netherlands ambitions of CO2 reductions do not extend to the entire value chain, which also makes it unclear wether the company's operation will align with the 1.5 degrees pathway.