Chile's Aza opens plant to increase green steel production

Chilean steelmaker Aceros Aza opened a US$26mn shredding plant, focused on increasing scrap processing capacity by 40% and on producing more green steel, while saving about 7,000t/y of CO2 and cutting energy consumption by 2.5%.

The facility is in Santiago's Colina area and has the capacity to process over 100t of scrap per hour.

"It is estimated that it will process around 230,000t of scrap annually, obtaining more than 189,000t of high-quality fragmented ferrous material, more than 3,000t of recoverable non-ferrous materials and approximately 40,000t of potential by-products," the company said in a statement.

The plant will also help increase steel production.

The shredding unit is among Aza's largest investments aside from its main plant in Colina, where it produces more than 450,000t/y of green steel from recycled scrap.

Aza's metals purchasing manager, Juan Antonio Osses, told BNamericas that production capacity is planned to increase by 10% to reach 580,000t/y.

He also said that the company will keep using metal waste from Chilean mining operations, such as scrap grinding balls recovered from old stockpiles, helping "eliminate environmental liabilities." Osses added that Aza is revaluing metallic material by dismantling equipment and machinery, such as shovels, trucks and hoppers.

"We recover thousands of tons of scrap metal that is part of the history or past of many companies, but which takes on a new life at Aza," chairman Jorge Matetic said in the statement. 

Matetic also highlighted Aza's contribution as the country's leading metal recycler, as well as the impact the new plant will have on boosting the circular economy.