All the secrets of a united
and close-knit team.
DESCRIPTION
A dynamic person, prepared to step in when there are critical situations, capable of planning and preventing even unexpected events. Active in making the plant operate better.
The maintenance engineer plays a key role within the plant, ensuring that machines function correctly and keeping them in a safe and efficient operating condition.
The maintenance engineer carries out various types of interventions: mechanical, electrical and automation, not only in emergency situations, but also during the inspection, preventive and predictive stages, so as to identify cases related to possible malfunctions or wear in advance. The engineer must be able to evaluate adequate interventions that keep machinery downtimes to a minimum.
This profession is in great demand and in constant evolution. A good maintenance engineer keeps updated and does so because he knows his job and knows that the machines are more and more sophisticated as time goes by and the technologies are always evolving.
He is open-minded and understands English in manuals and data sheets.
SKILLS
Problem solving, availability, flexibility, proactivity, teamwork, inclination to keeping knowledge and skills current.”
DESCRIPTION
Attentive, specialized, organized and with an overview.
The production operator plays a specific role within a line that is integrated with all the other processing phases.
He/she operates in a process logic, thinking of the before and after of the activity. He/she knows the machinery and equipment, how they operate and the steel industry very well. The operator feels part of a team.
The production operator knows that his/her job is fundamental for the final result: the product that will be delivered to the customer, always aiming at achieving the highest quality and paying the utmost attention to safety.
SKILLS
Availability, teamwork, flexibility, precision, careful timing.
DESCRIPTION
Select, optimize and keep everything under control.
The business depends on what the buyer, or purchasing manager buys. He/she follows the entire process to procure goods, services and raw materials such as scrap, bearing in mind two set objectives: to optimize costs and maintain high quality levels of the marketed product and ABS service. This is not an easy task, but the best buyers are recognized for their ability to do so.
The buyer is well-acquainted with the Italian and foreign steel markets. He/she enters the logic of production cycles, dealing with the usual suppliers or others that may prove to be more reliable, depending on the type of order. The buyer is a skilled negotiator and knows how to communicate effectively.
With an integrated perspective and overview, the buyer works in collaboration with the various areas, especially production and maintenance.
SKILLS
Negotiation, numerical analysis, cost-benefit analysis, make or buy analysis, results oriented, precision and communication skills.
DESCRIPTION
Technology and innovation hide no secrets from the Information Technology Specialist, who always pushes the boundaries of the results to be achieved: the specialist of Industry 4.0, who is already working on the next phase of Digital Innovation.
The IT specialist deals with IT and telematic products, implements management systems, configures new devices and checks existing ones to ensure that they are working properly.
Preparation of plans to upgrade and maintain the ICT aspects of each area of the organization: administrations, sales and production. Everyone needs his/her services: he/she must be able to answer many questions, which is why problem-solving is a key skill. Rationality is required to find solutions, but also intuitive and lateral thinking. There are many possibilities for professional growth and careers for those who are always able to keep learning and enhance their skills.
SKILLS
Innovation, problem solving, project management, reactivity, lateral thinking
DESCRIPTION
The Technical Account Manager works between customers and the company. He/she has good technical knowledge and good sales skills. The Technical Account Manager has complex and challenging tasks: gathering the customer’s requirements, preparing pre-feasibility studies, supporting sales, following product development and contributing to research.
The Technical Account Manager does so with the following objectives: customer satisfaction, being in line with company strategies and maintaining the portfolio.
The Technical Account Manager is an interface between various internal company functions and must have good listening, communication and interpersonal skills.
SKILLS
Focus on customer needs/priorities, result orientation, problem-solving, knowledge of the system and processes, good communication, interpersonal, organizational and listening skills
Sustainable steel production is possible
Attention to the people who live in the area engages us in concrete environmental sustainability projects. In fact, our goal is to manage and mitigate the impact of the activity and the presence of the steel mill. So, while the Croatian factory in Sisak is surrounded by a green park of 690,000 square metres, we created the mitigation hills in Cargnacco. The role they play is very important: they are a natural noise-barrier and at the same time they screen off the steel mill to become a new landscape element that connects the Company and the surrounding environment in a positive way.
Opened in 2013, the hills today stretch across over 2 km and mark the first step of a development that will take place in the coming years. The mitigation hills are partly made using Ecogravel®; an inert waste material from the production processes that is reused.
There are many choices that can be made to create and bring value to the community, to collaborators and to the ecosystem simply by starting with the one closest to us.
Planting trees around a steel mill means looking towards the future. The ABS woodlands are a real green lung. We have planted more than 10,000 different varieties, including trees and shrubs, which coexist and contribute to the natural local biodiversity. The area is a natural heritage that mitigates the visual impact of the plant and absorbs most of its noise. The woodlands cover an area of 13 hectares, which, just to give an idea of the visual size, is the equivalent of about 13 soccer fields.
There is growing demand for businesses to adopt sustainable development practices and measures, which the steel industry acknowledges is a sensitive issue. At ABS we put into practice procedures and activities focused on waste management and reutilization of by-products that come from our steel production processes.
Ecogravel® is one of these: a black or white granular sand waste that we have been transforming since 2005 for use in different sectors. Ecogravel® Black is a high-performance component mixed in concrete, cement-bound granular materials and bituminous aggregates, or more simply recycled asphalt, with which over 528 km of roads have been built in Friuli Venezia Giulia and Slovenia in recent years. Ecogravel® White, on the other hand, is intended for use in cements and in the stabilization of soils, especially in roadbeds where subsidence needs to be avoided.
For the industrialized production of Ecogravel®, we opened the Global Blue plant in 2007. The production output is about 200,000 tons/year. This is an example of circular reuse that allows us to contribute to the saving of natural resources and to open up to new market opportunities.
The goal of recycling steel processing material 100% is realistic and achievable. Scrap can be put back on the market in a virtuous circular economy process, even on a large scale. Let’s consider the scale from the rolling process: in the last year we have reused more than 20,000 tons with 60% that was recycled mainly to make washing machine counterweights for a total of 500,000 household appliances.
The remaining 40% of scrap is used by other steel mills; it is put back into their steel cycles to produce new material.
In addition to the scale from the rolling process, two other types of waste product are reprocessed: slag and fume dusts. Overall, 80% of the waste produced in ABS falls into the category of non-hazardous waste.
To produce steel actually means to recover and reuse, or recycle materials in a sequence of phases that involves the entire life cycle of the product. It already starts with a raw material that, in the case of a steel industry like ABS, is scrap metal, which is infinitely recyclable. In 2019 we transformed 1,190,000 tons for the manufacture of products and components for the most diverse sectors.
Can melting be green? of course it can, if you use electric arc furnaces like the ones we use in our plants. Technically they are called Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF), arc melting furnaces, or Danieli Arc in the case of the model designed and perfected by the Danieli Group.
With the ABS EAF furnaces we can talk about circular economy, because the melting process uses electricity to melt ferrous scrap, which gives new life to steel. The meltshop is the most energy-consuming process at ABS. It uses electricity to melt ferrous scrap, reduces CO2 emissions to a minimum and the steel produced contains approximately 70% of recycled material. In our production facilities there are another 15 heating furnaces for heat treatments. These furnaces are fuelled by natural gas. Natural gas is the most sustainable hydrocarbon in terms of CO2 emissions. However, we have gone even further and have invested in energy efficiency projects that have allowed us to reduce the consumption of natural gas by 4.4 million cubic metres per year, which is equal to the consumption of 2,200 families in a year. At the same time, we have also reduced CO2 emissions by 9,000 tons per year.
Attention to energy efficiency is important to our sustainable business approach. To this end, we are involved in numerous initiatives that focus on project innovation, technological innovation and intelligent plant management. A total of three macro areas affected by structural interventions and investments that aim at energy efficiency. Quite simply, this means using the resources we have in a rational way, exploiting their potential without dispersing them.
The “Remote Heating System” project embodies this concept well. The ABS offices and canteen heating will be “self-generated” by recycling the heat from the heating furnace. The process to continuously reduce the energy requirements is gradually being implemented by the company and since 2015 has allowed us to obtain the ISO 50001 energy management certificate; a voluntary international standard that recognizes our commitment to the efficient use of energy
An important milestone that confirms responsibility, commitment and perseverance.
We are the first steel company in our region to achieve the CPI Fire Prevention Certificate. The official document confirming this result is the PEC certified e-mail that was sent us by the Provincial Chief of the Fire & Rescue Service on 16 December 2019. This is only one of the steps taken along the path that was started in 2012 to adapt the entire ABS plant in Cargnacco according to legislation and which is part of a more general and strategic plan for the constant management of corporate safety.
With this project we can say that nature enters the steel plant through a product with a very low environmental impact.
ABS is the first company in the world to use natural ester, a triglyceride-based oil from rapeseed and sunflower extracts for applications in several processes. Thanks to its lubricating capacity, the fluid is used to insulate and cool the core and windings of the ladle furnace transformer, ensuring greater safety for operators engaged in activities where temperatures are considerably high, compared to other fluids. The project currently involves six transformers, with a view to being fully operational on all 36 existing machines.
Water plays a key role throughout the steel production cycle, especially when it comes to the various cooling phases.
How can we avoid wasting it and depleting the natural resources we have available? We answered this question by designing a cooling water treatment system which puts the water back into circulation after it has been used. Basically, we always use the same water time and time again with very little use of any water from the main supply network.
In this way, the ABS plant in Italy manages to save a volume of water that corresponds to twice that of Lake Sauris (UD): 140,000,000 m3 per year.
Water; an asset for everyone and indispensable for a steel mill. A factory consumes large quantities of water for many purposes from cooling of materials and machinery to dust control.
At ABS, we make the best use of water, which we measure using a water footprint. The footprint is an indicator that tells us we need 1.3 cubic metres of the resource per ton of steel produced. Data are collected periodically so that we can forecast future consumption and evaluate projects to recover and reuse water.
Aware of our contribution to maintaining sound environmental parameters, we have focused on continuously monitoring the fumes produced by the meltshop, on the reduction of emissions and on fume treatment, with a considerable investment: € 8 million to make the fume plant of the headquarters even more efficient and reduce the emissions into the air.
The task is performed by powerful fans that have a large suction capacity and work with lower energy consumption.
The plant has been operating at full speed since the end of 2018; it has an overall suction flow of almost 1,500,000 cubic metres per hour, which is 15% higher than the average performance of the previous system.
The size of the filters contributes to the performance levels: just think that the total area is over 22,000 m2, the equivalent of 3 soccer fields.
The quality of air is a priority for us, because the health of the environment and everyone’s well-being depend on it.
Working near inhabited areas pushes us to perform extremely strict controls on the emissions and the dispersion of particles into the atmosphere, especially of Pm10. The abbreviation Pm refers to particulate matter, with infinitesimal dimensions that can originate naturally or come from combustion processes. To measure the values and monitor the levels, we have installed several monitoring stations at sensitive points: upstream ABS in relation to the prevailing wind (North of via Buttrio), the sports field of Lumignacco, near the Museum of Cargnacco, Via Casali Caiselli and the ABS woodlands.
Among the various structures at our headquarters, the ABS Tower is the visible sign of sustainability that inspires us in many projects.
The tower was built to support an emergency water tank, which is still in use, but which has now also become a vertical industrial forest. A 36-metre-high, 10-metre-diameter vertical piece of architecture that has a varied vegetation composed of local ornamental species that are typical of the Friuli countryside growing around its steel structure, creating ideal conditions for small local fauna.