PWIHI is an iron-making plant engineering company and a 50:50 joint venture between IHI and Paul Wurth (headquartered in Luxembourg). In November the company will celebrate its tenth anniversary since its establishment. Mr. Yoshiro Suganuma and Mr. Johannes Munzer, who are the Representative Directors of PWIHI, gave an interview and discussed the company’s history and how the company will utilize its strengths in response to the steel industry moving toward CN.

  In 2012, in Japan Sumitomo Metal Industries had just completed its project to newly construct blast furnaces, and in the overseas market Chinese steelmakers were strengthening their presence. At the time IHI and Paul Wurth, who were both adept at handling iron-making plants, felt there was an urgent need to improve their competitiveness in order to maintain their iron-making plant business. This shared sense of urgency lead the 2 companies, who were license partners from before, to join forces and establish PWIHI.

  IHI’s core products were blast furnace plants, and Paul Wurth’s coke ovens were added to the product lineup and formed the business foundations of PWIHI. In 2019 the No.2 Blast Furnace at Nippon Steel’s Kansai Works Wakayama Area was fired. This blast furnace had been handled by IHI from before the joint venture was established. In the same year PWIHI received 5 domestic orders for coke ovens. The company also received orders for furnace top facilities and PCI devices, and furthermore the company delivered a coke dry quenching (CDQ) facility for India’s Tata Steel.

  Most recently PWIHI has received an order to newly construct the No.6 Coke Oven Battery A at  JFE Steel’s West Japan Works Fukuyama District, which was announced in August by JFE Steel. The new coke oven battery will consist of 52 ovens and will have a yearly production capacity of 682,000 tons. It will be Japan’s first ‘stamp-charged’ coke oven, and coal stamped into coal cakes will be charged from the side with a mobile coal charging car. In addition to the coke oven’s high efficiency contributing to CN, one other benefit is that it can use small-grained low caking coal. Furthermore, PWIHI’s unique environmentally-friendly technology ‘SOPRECO’ will be installed as well. ‘SOPRECO’ is a smokeless coal charging system that is able to collect dust.

  In the past 10 years the steel industry has been moving toward achieving CN, and this trend has especially strengthened during the past 5 years. In response to this trend, PWIHI will also enter a new stage. Representative Suganuma commented “We will be able to adapt to the trend toward CN exactly because of the partnership between IHI and Paul Wurth. Most notably Europe, where Paul Wurth is headquartered, has taken the lead in terms of the actual implementation of technologies toward achieving CN. We have been deepening our ties with Paul Wurth and also Paul Wurth’s parent company SMS in Germany, and one of the strengths of PWIHI is that we can make proposals of the technologies that have already been actually implemented in Europe by customizing the technologies to suit the needs in the Japanese market.”

  One of the new technologies the company will propose is the submerged arc furnace (SAF). The SAF is a facility for making molten iron by feeding direct reduced iron (DRI) and hot-briquetted iron (HBI), which in turn are gathering interest as sources of iron that can contribute to decarbonization. An affiliate company of SMS has already provided around 400 SAF for non-ferrous metal refining. The SAF is suited for continuous operations, and one other benefit is that similar to blast furnaces, the slag produced is granulated slag, which is easier to reuse compared to the slag produced from electric arc furnaces.

  Furthermore since IHI was also originally an electric arc furnace plant engineering company, IHI and SMS will combine their strengths to meet the demand for large electric arc furnaces, ancillary facilities such as burners with high combustion efficiency, slag granulation devices and sampling robots and also the demand for energy efficient facilities. PWIHI plans to further exchange information with SMS group’s Japan branch, which has moved its office to the same floor of  Toyosu Center Building as PWIHI, and also aims to support Japanese steelmakers conduct steady operations through various measures including DX and businesses related to facility life cycles.

  Representative Munzer was dispatched from Paul Wurth and came to Japan 2 years ago. He enthusiastically stated “Our most important challenge is CN. I feel fortunate that I have been able to come to Japan during this period when the industry is dramatically changing. During this important period I hope I can take part in new endeavors in Japan.”

  Even among the SMS group, Paul Wurth is the largest organization handling hydrogen. Paul Wurth has been investing in Germany’s Sunfire, a company that manufactures water electrolysis devices using SOEC to produce hydrogen, from when the latter company was still a startup. Mr. Munzer emphasized “We are in a position where we have easier access to hydrogen technologies that will lead to CN.”

  Paul Wurth establishes relationships with these types of startup companies through their incubation office ‘InCub’ in Luxembourg. This has lead to cultivating technologies not only related to CN, but also other technologies such as those related to DX, connectivity, plant optimization, AI and 3D printers.

  Representative Munzer stated his enthusiasm toward expanding the cooperation between the 2 companies. “IHI is an innovative company, and I believe we could combine our strengths not just in terms of iron-making plants but also for other solutions as well.” The IHI group has been focusing their efforts on such technologies as those related to ammonia, CCUS and gas loading, and Paul Wurth has a keen interest in those fields as well. Representative Suganuma commented “We hope we can propose CO2 utilization solutions to Japanese manufacturers.”

   During the 10 years since PWIHI’s establishment, the number of employees has doubled to 80 people. The iron-making plant business handles many large-scale projects and the number of orders the company receives tends to fluctuate, but if necessary the company can rely on additional engineers sent from IHI. Backed by support from the IHI group, PWIHI will work on various measures including developing technologies related to ammonia, and venture forth toward the next 10 years, where dramatic changes are expected to take place.