WHYALLA TRANSFORMATION
South Australia’s Whyalla Steelworks is undergoing a radical remaking as the old industrial plant is revitalised in a $1b project. The project is funded by Whyalla’s owner GFG Alliance and is set to transform the steelworks area. GFG is also building the
WHYALLA Steelworks in South Australia has been an Australian landmark for decades and is now seeing exciting changes with a $1b investment project.
Renamed Liberty OneSteel by its new owner GFG Alliance, which purchased the plant from Arrium, the company has a radical plan to revitalise the legendary steelworks.
GFG Alliance is spending $1b to modernise its Whyalla steel plant and double its production capacity from its current 1mtpa over the next three years.
The company has signed contracts to build a new rail and structural heavy section mill expected to produce 1.8mtpa of high quality steel including, new products such as steel slabs, billets, structurals and rail.
Currently, Whyalla produces steel billets which are rolled into long products, and about 65pc is sold to steel rod and bar producers.
The rest is converted to structural steel and rails at Whyalla structural mill.
There is also plans at Whyalla for a modern pulverised injection coal plant, and an expansion of Whyalla’s port into a world-scale, multi-user facility.
Whyalla steelworks and its South Australian iron ore mines were acquired by GFG Alliance from Australian company Arrium in September 2017.
Headed by Indian-born Britain-based businessman Sanjeev Gupta, GFG Alliance has been built up over the course of the past 60 years by the Gupta family.
The London-based company’s interests span many businesses from mining and energy generation through to metals production and engineering and banking.
GFG Alliance was reluctant to reveal too many details of its transformation programme as it has some important announcements in the pipeline.
“The Whyalla Transformation Program also continues to progress in earnest, with further updates expected to be announced soon,” a spokesman for GFG Alliance said.
Sustainability vision
Behind GFG Alliance’s network of businesses is its vision to create a sustainable business model that will work for tomorrow’s generations.
“On a planet of limited resources, rising population and cycles of prosperity and recession, we place great emphasis on making our enterprises both resilient and sustainable,” the company states on its website.
This approach includes a commitment to using renewable energy sources, and to used recycled metal in its furnaces and mills.
Through its sister company Liberty House Group, GFG Alliance is pursuing two environmental strategies, GREENSTEEL and GREENALUMINIUM.
The GREENSTEEL strategy is for the company to reycle and upcycle its scrap steel products using electric arc furnaces powered by renewable energy.
This marks a shift away from traditional steel-making methods that use steel raw materials in blast furnaces.
Steel produced from scrap material creates a third less carbon dioxide emissions than steel made from iron ore and coking coal, stated the company.
GFG recycles 4mtpa of scrap steel in Britain and Australia, a portion of which is reused by the company after being melted in its electric arc furnaces.
In October 2019, Liberty said it was vesting GFG Alliance’s steel assets into a single global company, Liberty Steel Group, including Whyalla.
GREENSTEEL is at the heart of Liberty
Steel Group’s strategy with the company exploring new ways of making steel such as hydrogen-based steel production.
Liberty Steel Group has a production capacity of 18mtpa for rolled steel products and employs 30,000 people in 10 countries, making it the eighth largest steel company outside China.
Announcing the creation of Liberty Steel Group at the World Steel Dynamics conference in Rome, Italy, in October 2019, Mr Gupta said he wanted to forge a sustainable pathway for his steel business.
“As a responsible business, the legacy we pass on to future generations is every bit as important as our bottom line,” Mr Gupta said.
“We are creating a new force in steel with the size, scale and agility to force a path towards a sustainable future for our steel businesses and the communities in which we operate.”
Solar energy
GFG said its project to build a solar farm to harness the energy of the sun for use by the steelworks at Whyalla was making good progress.
“We are progressing well with our Cultana Solar Farm, and hope to break ground in early 2020,” the GFG Alliance spokesman said.
Located on the northern outskirts of Whyalla, the Cultana Solar Farm with a generation capacity of 280MW is expected to deliver 600GW of solar-generated electricity to the steelworks and local businesses.
The facility has 780,000 solar panels and covers 1100 hectares, or 550 times the size of the Adelaide Oval, and will offset 492,000tpa of carbon emissions.
GFG Alliance company SIMEC Energy Australia is delivering the $350m project which is relying heavily on a local workforce.
“We have a strong bias towards employing local people and companies across all our projects and in particular Cultana is expected to generate 350 jobs during construction,” the GFG Alliance spokesman said.
SIMEC said on its website that it is committed to upskilling local people to meet the employment requirements of the Cultana solar farm.
Supply chain
For the GREENALUMINIUM strategy, which GFG is pursuing in the UK and Australia, the company is shortening its supply chains, reducing its carbon footprint, and developing a sustainable metals manufacturing sector.
An example of its integrated supply chain is the one feeding coal and iron to its Whyalla steelworks.
SIMEC Mining, a GFG Alliance company, operates iron ore mines in South Australia’s Middleback Ranges, 60km from Whyalla, which supply magnetite iron ore to the steelworks.
The mining company also operates the Tahmoor coking coal mine in NSW with its production of 2mtpa, some of which goes to Whyalla.
The alliance also owns the Ardrossan dolomite mine in South Australia that provides dolomite flux to the Whyalla works.
In a January 20 company statement, GFG Alliance announced the creation of a new company within the group, Alvance Aluminium Group, to consolidate its aluminium-related assets.
The Paris-headquartered Alvance will oversee GFG Alliance’s upstream and downstream aluminium assets from alumina supply to smelters and manufacturing plants.
Alvance is the standard bearer of GFG Alliance’s GREENALUMINIUM sustainable aluminium strategy and has a goal of becoming a carbon neutral enterprise by 2030.
“We are progressing well with our Cultana Solar Farm, and hope to break ground in early 2020.”