Japan’s third largest steelmaker Kobe Steel announced that its low-CO2 blast furnace steel product Kobenable Steel will be used for 180,000-tonne class bulk carrier built by Imabari Shipbuilding. This makes it the first shipbuilding company in the world to use Kobenable Steel. The vessel will employ Kobenable Premier, which reduces 100% of CO2 emissions in steel production based on the mass balance method.

As an initiative to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Imabari Shipbuilding is working to improve the efficiency of transportation of materials and equipment and to reduce power consumption and the amount of raw materials used in the manufacturing process with the aim of developing environmentally friendly ships and realizing environmentally friendly manufacturing. Imabari Shipbuilding adopted Kobenable Steel for its ability to lower CO2 emissions in shipbuilding compared to conventional steel products.

Kobenable Steel, developed by the Kobe Steel based on its original CO2 reduction solution for blast furnace iron making, is available for all types of steel products including steel sheets, steel plates, wire rods and bars manufactured at Kobe Steel’s Kakogawa Works and Kobe Wire Rod & Bar Plant. In addition, since it maintains the same level of high quality as conventional products, customers can use low-CO2 blast furnace steel for products that require high quality, such as special steel wire rods and ultra-high-tensile strength steel, which are specialties of the Group.''

Kobe Steel is the first Japanese steelmaker that commercialized low-CO2 blast furnace steel products in 2022 in two categories

1. Kobenable Premier - 100% CO2 reduction

2. Kobenable Half - 50% CO2 reduction

Kobe Steel’s unique technology achieves a significant reduction of CO2 emissions from the blast furnace by charging into the blast furnace a large amount of hot briquetted iron manufactured via the MIDREX Process, accounting for about 80% of the world’s natural gas-based direct reduced iron production. It can reduce CO2 emissions in the blast furnace iron making process by 20-40%. The mass-balance method is to allocate specific characteristics to a certain portion of products according to the input amount of raw materials when there is a mix of raw materials with and with no such characteristics (e.g., CO2 reduction effects) in the manufacturing process.

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