Iron & Steelmaking User Symposium 2022

Metso Outotec’s Ferrous & Heat Transfer business successfully organized “Iron & Steelmaking User Symposium 2022” across three different locations in India in November 2022 in India. It was held in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand (14 Nov, 2022), Bhubaneshwar, Odisha (16 Nov, 2022) and Toranagallu, Karnataka (18 Nov 2022) and more than 200 people participated in our events.

This was a first of its kind symposium that was organized by Metso Outotec since the merger in 2020. It gave us and our customers a chance to meet face-to-face, and at the same time offered us the opportunity to appreciate the numerous long-term relationships as well as the mutual trust that has been built over the years.

“The main reason for organizing this user symposium was to meet our customers who we were unable to see for so long due to COVID. Moreover, it also gave us an opportunity to showcase how our capabilities have strengthened post Metso Outotec merger. At the symposium, we shared our latest development on agglomeration technologies (most important being NextGen Pelletizing) as well as decarbonization solution for iron and steel making (Circored and Circosmelt). Another very important element was it gave us a chance to discuss experiences and receive feedback on the work that we have been doing together. During the big mining events which are more meet-and-greet by type, it is more difficult to have in-depth discussions. So, these customized symposium events were a good opportunity for us to discuss with a larger number of customers and for them to meet several of our top experts at the same time,” shared Westy Bialke, Director, Sales at Metso Outotec.

Metso Outotec’s global team of experts from India, Germany, Middle East and USA was present at these events. From customers’ side, cumulatively over 200 representatives participated from Tata Steel at the Jamshedpur event; Jindal Steel Power Limited, Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel India, Rungta Mines Limited, Thriveni Earthmovers, BRPL, Essar and NPSPL in the Bhubaneshwar event; and JSW in Toranagallu.

Participants were intrigued by the insights our experts shared on the current challenges that the iron and steelmaking industry is faced with and shared how Metso Outotec is capable to take on these challenges leveraging its decades of experience and its state-of-the-art technologies in the field of pelletizing, sintering and decarbonization.

The technical session was followed by an hour-long open feedback discussion where participants surprised us by sharing some interesting insights into their challenges and perspectives on what they think is the need of the hour for the iron and steelmaking industry. Nevertheless, other major discussion topic was how we can achieve synergies when cooperating in existing operations, current and future projects with our customers.

"We have had an exciting week in India—all thanks to great participation from our customers. We had very lively and interactive panel discussions around decarbonisation and the future of pelletizing. It was also great to see the interaction between different customers at the Bhubaneshwar event. At Toranagallu, JSW shared unique insights into their decarbonisation strategy while expanding the ISP at the same time. We are certain that our NextGen Pelletizing^TM concept will contribute in meeting those targets and that joint emission reduction on sinter plants is possible,” shares Matthias Gabriel, Director, Ferrous at Metso Outotec.

All in all, the symposium was a great success, and we are proud and thankful for all participants!