Tata Sreel Europe (London, UK):

Köhler K.-U., Dr. Eng., Managing Director and CEO, phone: +44-20-7717-4444

In the case of Tata Steel, everything that was done in the field of innovation and research & development is relentlessly focused on our customers’ needs. This means working together over the long term as partners with our customers in various supply chains to contribute to their success in their own markets. Tata Steel’s market differentiation strategy seeks to provide its customers with reliable, enhanced products and services that few others – and sometimes no others – can provide. Last year Tata Steel launched 17 new products, called ‘differentiated’ products have grown by almost a quarter as a proportion of our sales over the last two years. Open access is a feature of several other initiatives Tata Steel has developed in recent years through its R&D arm. Together with the Centre for Process Innovation, Tata Steel Europe last year opened the Thermal Technologies Centre on Teesside in the UK, an open-access facility that offers the know-how and physical assets for customers from various industries to develop new hightemperature processes. An example of the programme in action can be seen in the company’s Automotive Thrust project, which has been working with Tata Steel customers and industrial partners to submit a series of project proposals for grant funding to develop low-carbon vehicle technologies. Earlier this year Tata Steel opened a new hot press forming plant at the Ijmuiden plant in the Netherlands to serve the company’s automotive customers. This highly advanced facility has been established to develop crash-resistant steels to make vehicles safer and more fuel-efficient. Tata Steel is supporting the development of breakthrough technologies to deal with the challenge of carbon emissions as a founding member of the ULCOS (Ultra Low CO₂ Steelmaking) consortium of European steel producers. Among the potential technologies ULCOS has identified as having the best prospects for success is HIsarna, a cyclone-converter technology that combines Rio Tinto’s HIsmelt process with the Isarna process developed at Tata Steel’s IJmuiden works.