ArcelorMittal: Forging tomorrow’s steel from Luxembourg

Luxembourg's industrial legacy is far larger than the country itself. With a past as one of the world's leading steel producers, it is home to the headquarters of steel giant ArcelorMittal. It also hosts several of the group’s production plants and one of its 11 R&D laboratories.

“R&D and innovation are an important part of our activity,” says Christian Bobadilla, Head of Long Products R&D in the Luxembourg R&D centre comprising 50 experts. The team focuses on three areas:

• Performance optimisation of production assets, which includes work on product quality, production costs and environmental sustainability.
• Development of new products and services.
• Development of application use cases that help customers get the most from new products.

The reach of the R&D centre, which celebrated its 50^th anniversary in 2022, goes well beyond the Grand Duchy.

“We target the global construction market and support plants worldwide, often in collaboration with our other R&D labs. However, proximity to local plants is essential. The Luxembourg sites often run pilots to test our new solutions before they are deployed globally,” Mr Bobadilla explains.

The Luxembourg sites often run pilots to test our new solutions before they are deployed globally.
Christian Bobadilla, ArcelorMittal

The Luxembourg factories have the capacity to produce the world’s largest steel beams, and products made here have been used in prestigious buildings, including One World Trade Center in New York, Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Mohammed VI Tower in Rabat. Mr Bobadilla is particularly proud of the use of the company’s newest wide-flange sections – the heaviest hot-rolled beams ever produced worldwide, developed by the Luxembourg R&D lab and plants – in the future buildings of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, US.

Strategic research partnerships in Luxembourg

The R&D team has a wide range of expertise, including areas such as reducing environmental impact and digitalisation. To remain at the forefront, the ArcelorMittal Chair of Steel Construction was established at the University of Luxembourg in 2010 to advance research and education.

“The Chair gives us access to a network of key players and helps us benefit from the know-how of the university,” Mr Bobadilla comments.

This support is important as it enables us to increase our resources and boost our research and innovation capacity.
Christian Bobadilla, ArcelorMittal

The centre also has a long-standing partnership with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), spanning fields such as energy performance and decarbonisation. The two partners recently launched the RESteel project to optimise the use of recycled scrap metal by managing residual elements in steel. This initiative, which benefits from LIST’s expertise and highly specialised equipment for material characterisation, further supports ArcelorMittal’s decarbonisation efforts.

Several of ArcelorMittal’s R&D projects have received co-funding from Luxembourg’s Ministry of the Economy. “This support is important as it enables us to increase our resources and boost our research and innovation capacity,” Mr Bobadilla points out. “We have good contacts with the ministry and constructive discussions on these programmes.”

His unit has also participated in several projects with funding from the EU’s R&D and innovation programmes. “Beyond the support, this offers us valuable opportunities to connect with other European construction market players, including academics and customers, which contributes to our vision for future developments.”

AI, robotics and the future of steel innovation

Two fields on top of ArcelorMittal’s priority list for future innovation are artificial intelligence and robotics. “We integrate AI in all aspects of our work: product development, design, time to market and process optimisation. We are also working on use cases for robots in our plants,” says Mr Bobadilla.

Technologies are moving faster than ever, and we need to spot opportunities for AI and robotics applications that don’t exist yet in our field.
Christian Bobadilla, ArcelorMittal

To further explore innovation opportunities in AI and digitalisation, he recently visited Luxembourg’s business-oriented supercomputer, MeluXina. “A unique feature of MeluXina is that we can get direct access to its capacities, whereas in other places we can only be connected through collaborative partnerships with universities or other industrial partners,” he explains, adding that the equipment and the level of technical expertise of the team were quite impressive.

ArcelorMittal is also connected with Luxembourg’s startup community to work on open innovation. “Technologies are moving faster than ever, and we need to spot opportunities for AI and robotics applications that don’t exist yet in our field,” says Mr Bobadilla. “I’m excited to see where this will take us in the next few years.”

Photo credits: ArcelorMittal

Article originally published in Crossroads Magazine