2023 Winners of the Annual Stainless Steel Industry Awards
Yesterday evening, at the worldstainless-27 conference, the world stainless association has announced the winners of the 2023 Stainless Steel Industry Awards. The Awards are given in four categories, Market Development, Technology, Safety and Sustainability. Every year, the association awards good practices and novel ideas in these areas.
Market Development
In the category of Market Development, the Gold Award was won by NIPPON STEEL Stainless Steel Corporation for ‘The Seismic Retrofitting of the Kamihirai Floodgate’. The floodgate was retro-fitted with high strength duplex stainless steel and although the gate became larger in overall size, the weight was kept the same as before. This was necessary to comply with the latest seismic standards. A welding technique was developed for Uranami welding of large-diameter duplex stainless steel pipes, especially a high-sophistication technique that allowed the production of high-quality welded joints during on-site welding. The jury was impressed with the amount of difficulties that were overcome to realise this project and could therefore see the applicability of this approach elsewhere. Discover the project here.
The shared Silver Awards were for ‘High Strength and High Corrosion Resistant Stainless Steel Cladding of TE4003C5 for Railroad Vehicles’ by TISCO (Baowu Group) (click here) and for the ‘Duplex Stainless Steel Wire Rope Cable Solution’ by the Australian Stainless Steel Development Association (click here).
Technology
The Gold Award in the Technology Category was won by POSCO for the ‘High-Strength 430 Stainless Steel for Large-Scaled Premium Home Appliances’. In this development, the yield strength was improved by using the phase transformation technology of conventional 430 stainless steel without increasing the manufacturing cost. The jury found the research and excellent result with this application could be applied to different home appliances and deserved to be rewarded. Discover the project here.
The ‘Non-Magnetic and High Strength Austenitic Stainless Steel with High Nitrogen for Mobile Devices’, also submitted by POSCO won the Silver Award in this category (click here). A shared Bronze Award went to POSCO for the ‘Development of Low-Cost Brazing Filler Metal for Stainless Steel’ (click here) and NIPPON STEEL Stainless Steel Corporation for the original ‘Roof of Japan National Stadium’ (click here).
Safety
For awarding companies in the safety section, the jury looked for practical innovations that reduce the number of safety incidents in the workplace and/or develop transferrable countermeasures to avoid specific injury types and develop both controls and workers skills / cultural mindsets to directly reduce the number of safety incidents.
The winner of the Gold Award in this section was Bahru Stainless for the ‘Smart Safety Zone’. With this project the worker safety was increased through use of Smart Sensor Barriers which are effective in reducing accidents and injuries by early detection and reaction to human presence and movements. Discover the project here.
The Silver Safety Award was won by Aperam, for the ‘Safety, Respect, Equality and Well-Being at Work!’ project (click here) and the implementation of ‘Ergonomic Assists for Heavy Lifting’, North American Stainless received the Bronze Award (click here).
Sustainability
The Gold Award was won by Acerinox Europa, for their ‘Waste Water Re-use Project’ which helped to combat the devastating effects of drought situations. Acerinox Europa has made a significant effort to search for ways to become better water stewards and reduce their water footprint. With this project their water consumption has been initially reduced by a significant 400m³ per week. The jury applauded these good results and hopes this can be expanded to other sites worldwide. Discover this project here.
For Sustainability, the Silver Award was given to TISCO (Baowu Group) for their ‘Energy Utilization of CO2 in Converter Smelting’ (click here) and the Bronze Award was won by the ‘Annealing Furnace Revamping for Gas Saving’ project from Bahru Stainless (click here).
worldstainless would like to congratulate the winners and all member companies that have submitted case studies. Again, this year, the overall quality of the submitted projects was high with some very original thinking applied to many submissions. The innovation that the global producers of stainless steels constantly offer reflects the dynamic, innovative and sustainable characteristics of our industry. Stainless steels are the ultimate ‘fit and forget’ sustainable material family and worldstainless is proud to showcase some of the best of these developments through our annual awards program.
