Product innovation

Our challenge

Our customers, investors, employees and communities increasingly want to work with a company that can foresee their needs, and increasingly this is about sustainable development. With nothing less than a transformation of our society needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, we must design solutions for low-carbon mobility, households and infrastructure, whilst using less raw materials, producing less emissions and ensuring all by-products are reusable.

Our approach

R&D investment: As a core strength of our business, we invest over $250m each year in research and development. In North America we have two R&D laboratories, one in East Chicago, Indiana and another in Hamilton, Ontario.

These 1500 talented experts who work in 12 different centers across the world, develop new steel solutions to enable more sustainable infrastructure and lifestyles. With a passion for innovation, a keen understanding of our customer expectations, and an eye on long term trends, our researchers pursue both continuous improvement to drive cost, energy, water and material efficiencies, and breakthrough technologies to transform the way we make steel.

Innovation: Both the products we launch to our customers, and the processes that lie behind their manufacture, are the outcome of many years of innovation. Our global R&D team focuses on the following areas:

• Breakthrough low-emissions steelmaking technologies to address Climate Change.
• Digitalization, using big data, analytics and robotics to drive efficiencies across every aspect of the business, from maintenance to safety, defect recognition and quality assurance to 3D printing.
• Automotive innovation, with a focus on electric vehicle solutions design.
• Breakthrough construction solutions, housed in our Steligence® division.
• Product sustainability data underpinning our global R&D programme, through use of our Sustainability Innovation tool, lifecycle assessments and environmental product declarations.