Environment

Steelmaking activities present potential interferences towards numerous environmental compartments that need to be carefully addressed. AFV Beltrame Group has long had a management system in place that has made it possible to highlight the main environmental aspects characteristic of its plants and to implement conduction and prevention actions consistent with the results obtained from the assessment of potential impacts with respect to environmental matrices. First and foremost, the Group constantly follows the evolution of the best available techniques (BAT – Best Available Techniques), which represent the reference point for plant upgrades and for the application of operational and management procedures designed to limit the impacts of its activities, with a view to prevention. The Group’s plants are subject to numerous internal audits to ensure that they maintain legislative compliance on all environmental aspects and to identify potential for improvement, according to the classic PDCA cycle. Inspections conducted by control bodies (ARPA, DREAL, AFU, Ministry of the Environment) in the various countries where the Group is present have also confirmed the proper management of the prescriptions given by environmental authorizations and internally set requirements, which assume a binding character for the Group. As part of the environmental management system, the Group also constantly monitors its performance through tools that favor a visual approach, with the use of data dashboards and infographics, which are easy and immediate to read, and which, through parametric analyses, integrate the main impacts into a single numerical indicator (called the eco-index). The eco-index thus provides a representation of the level of environmental performance of plants, through the aggregation of a dozen parameters, each of which is evaluated against target values, defined by legal and authorization requirements, budget objectives, and internal targets. The main parameters considered are inherent to dust and CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, water consumption and discharges, waste recovery rate, and specific consumption of natural gas in reheating furnaces.