ArcelorMittal Zenica, the steel producer located in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), today signed a 9.6 mill BAM (€4.9m) contract with Italian company “Ekoplant”, marking the start of a major project to install advanced new dust filters in the steel plant.

Commenting, Mr Biju Nair, Chief Executive Officer at ArcelorMittal Zenica, said “Today marks another important step towards our goal of building a long-term, sustainable future for steelmaking in this historical industrial city. Reducing our environmental footprint is an essential part of this journey. We are once again demonstrating that we keep our promises and we are committed to continued investment in the latest and best technology to make a real difference to our city.”

Work on the new filters is expected to be completed by early 2019. When fully operational, the BOF (basic oxygen furnace) secondary de-dusting system will meet all relevant B&H and EU standards and eliminate visible ‘red dust’ emissions from the plant. More than 95% of fumes from production operations will be captured and cleaned in the bag filter, which will result in dust emissions below 10 mg/Nm3.

The new contract replaces a previous attempt to install the filters, which was unfortunately cancelled when the previous contractor went into receivership.

The BOF Steel Plant project follows the successful completion in late 2013 of the de-dusting of the blast furnace casting platform and the installation in Spring 2017 of hybrid filtration technology in the sinter plant, a further €3m investment. Also earlier this year, a further €4.2m investment introduced new technology to achieve major reductions in smoke and gas emissions from the coke battery.

The BOF project brings ArcelorMittal’s total investments in environmental projects at Zenica to more than €50m since 2005.