Key environmental indicators
Since 2000, NLMK Group has invested around $2.4 billion in environmental projects. Since then, the output has almost doubled and the company became the largest steel producer in Russia. Adoption of new state-of-the-art technologies alongside a major equipment upgrade significantly reduced the Group’s environmental footprint.
Investment in NLMK Group environmental projects, $ m
Today, NLMK Group has halved its specific atmospheric emissions, achieving the level of best available technologies. Since 2000, the gross emissions into the atmospheric air in the company as a whole have decreased by 18%, subject to a 2-fold increase in steel production.
These results were made possible by a set of management activities and investment projects. The measures include production line overhauls, installing high-efficiency dust and gas cleaning units, mounting or modifying filtering equipment, as well as introducing technologies for secondary resource neutralization, capture, and utilization in the production loop.
NLMK Group air emissions, kg/t steel
*2019-2020 Specific emission without the influence of temporary factors associated with a decrease in production at NLMK Lipetsk
NLMK Group is one of the industry leaders in terms of water use efficiency and minimal negative impact on water basins in the regions of its operation due to the adoption of advanced environmental technologies.
Specific water consumption (difference between water use and water disposal) has been consistently reduced reaching 2.2 m³/t in 2023.
Most NLMK Group businesses use closed-circuit water supply systems. NLMK Lipetsk, Altai-Koks, VIZ Steel, NLMK Kaluga, Stoilensky, NLMK Ural, NLMK Metalware, NLMK DanSteel, NLMK Indiana, NLMK Pennsylvania, NLMK Sharon Coating, NLMK Verona, NLMK Clabecq and NLMK La Louvière have introduced water recycling systems both local for individual facilities and plant-wide. This serves to reduce fresh water intake and industrial waste water discharge into surface water bodies.
The share of recycled water supply in NLMK Group remains at a consistently high level of over 97%.
Over the last 40 years, the intake of fresh water from the Voronezh River by the Group’s main site in Lipetsk has been reduced ninefold.
Water intake from the Voronezh River, mln m³
The Strategy 2023 goal to reduce the discharge of pollutants into water bodies by 25% across NLMK Group has been attained in 2021.
Dynamics of pollutants entering water bodies with effluents across NLMK Group, kt
In 2020 NLMK Lipetsk completed a capex project to upgrade its local waste water treatment facilities with investment totalling RUB 118 million.
State-of-the-art technologies for the recycling of secondary resources, as well as various recycling initiatives, enable efficient use of secondary resources. In 2023, the share of Fe-containing raw materials recycled by NLMK Group companies totalled 100.4%, excluding mining waste.
Over the past 20 years, specific waste generation across the Group as a whole has decreased by a factor of 7 while production has doubled.
In 2020, NLMK Lipetsk fully recycled its slag dump, with a total weight of over 5 million tonnes of secondary resources accumulated since the 1970s.
More than 300,000 tonnes of Fe was recovered and reused in steel production. Around 25 hectares of usable area have been recovered for commercial use.