Slovenia: SIJ Acroni, part of SIJ Group, has acquired the operations and equipment for processing slag from Harsco Minerali for an undisclosed sum. Previously the company used Harsco Minerali for the service, according to the Slovenian Press Agency. SIJ Acroni has taken over both Harsco's activity and equipment, and invited all Harsco employees to join the company.

Harsco Minerali processed 0.2Mt of slag for SIJ in 2017. The company mainly processed old slag deposits but new slag is created on an on-going basis during steel production. The processing products are used as inputs for asphalt and other engineering materials including insulation, and some products can be recycled for steel production. Harsco Minerali reported sales of Euro12m in 2016 and a net loss of Euro0.22m.

"By taking over the equipment and operations of Harsco Minerali we shall process what was once waste material into a by-product that we shall use in the subsequent production process or sell as an input material for construction, road construction, and environment remediation," said SIJ Acroni managing director Branko Žerdoner.

Belgium: Data from the World Steel Association shows that world crude steel production rose by 4.6% year-on-year to 882Mt in first half of 2018. The association gathers data from 64 countries. Growth was driven by increases in Asia, where crude steel production rose by 5.2% to 614Mt. Production rose by 1.6% to 87.3Mt in the European Union, by 2.4% to 59Mt in the US and by 2.8% to 50.5Mt in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Europe: Tata Steel and ThyssenKrupp have signed agreements to merge their European steel businesses in a 50/50 joint venture. This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in September 2017. The proposed new company will be named ThyssenKrupp Tata Steel. The transaction is subject to merger control clearance in several jurisdictions, including the European. Until the merger completes, ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe and Tata Steel in Europe will still operate as separate companies and as competitors.

“The joint venture will create a strong pan European steel company that is structurally robust and competitive. This is a significant milestone for Tata Steel and we remain fully committed to the long-term interest of the joint venture company. We are confident that this company will create value for all stakeholders,” said Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Steel.

Germany: Loesche says it is continuing its research and development of a process to create a steel slag suitable for cement production following a legal dispute.

The engineering company has worked with the FA Finger-Institut für Baustoffkunde (FIB) at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on the thermally reductive modification of steel slags for recycling iron and manufacturing ‘steelworks clinker.’ It has developed two procedures for thermally reductive conditioning of BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) slag that have been registered for a patent, which largely differ in the respective cooling process for the remaining molten metal. The individual stages of the procedure have already been tried and tested on an industrial scale. Loesche’s partner for the entire procedure is Primetals Technologies based in Linz, Austria, which has industrial-scale plants for reduction and fast cooling based on patented procedures in its product range. The remaining iron (approximately 8 - 10%) that is still in the ‘steelwork clinker’ can then be separated in a Loesche mill. The separation procedure for this, which has also been patented by Loesche, has been in operation for approximately six years to recycle stainless steel from stainless steel slags in a recycling plant in Belgium.

However, following smelting trials conducted with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in 2011, Loesche faced a lawsuit regarding the patents for its procedures. The legal uncertainty that this created led to the suspension of further development and implementation of the two procedures for more than three years. The legal dispute was resolved in December 2017. The second conditioning procedure – the fast cooling – was assigned as the sole property of Loesche. A third of the ownership of the first conditioning procedure - slow cooling – was conceded to the BAM, represented by the German government.

Loesche now plans to implement the second procedure into industrial practice.