SSAB Special Steels

SSAB Special Steels aims to further strengthen its leading position in high-strength steels as well as in related value-added services. The market for high-strength steels has to a large extent been driven by SSAB. Since 2000, SSAB’s shipments have increased by an average of around 8% a year, outperforming the general steel market. Structural growth is generated by manufacturers’ needs for higher productivity and better sustainability performance in machinery and equipment. Upgrading components to more advanced steel enables weight reduction and extended service life.

Development of new products and applications often takes place in close cooperation with customers. As early as possible in the development of a new product – be it a tipper, a chute or a crane – SSAB’s engineers work together with the customer in developing solutions that best utilize the properties of each steel grade.

With an estimated global market share of 25%, SSAB is the largest producer of high-strength steels. There is a large number of competitors with relatively small market shares and SSAB sells roughly 3 times more in terms of volume than its closest competitor. Most competitors focus on sales to service centers and large OEMs in selected markets. Apart from those segments, SSAB’s unique global sales network enables us also to reach small and mid-size customers in all corners of the world. This network includes own stock locations, local sales force as well as technical support.

To further develop the channels to the market, SSAB Special Steels is expanding the Hardox^® Wearparts network as well as SSAB Services. Hardox^® Wearparts is a network of mainly independent companies offering wear parts and just-in-time repair services to end-users in the local aftermarket in the mining, quarrying, recycling and construction sectors. SSAB Services focuses on providing products and services to machine builders and the after-market business. This strategy allows SSAB to maintain a high service level in smaller and fragmented markets, and also to gain exposure to end-users’ operating expenditures (OPEX), which has a stabilizing effect over the business cycle. This has proven to be a successful strategy not only to increase the sales volume but also to drive further upgrading to harder and stronger steels in line with our vision. This ability will be developed further in the future.

Growing the volume of high-strength steels is a key in the overall objective of the SSAB Group to improve the product mix. High-strength products are also made in the mills of SSAB Americas and SSAB Europe and increasing those volumes means allocating less capacity to standard products. By 2026, when the steel mill in Oxelösund has been converted to an electric arc furnace (EAF) and the production of sponge iron using HYBRIT technology has started, SSAB Special Steels will be able to offer fossil-free premium products.

• Grow shipments by 23% from 1.1 million tonnes in 2020 to 1.6 million during 2023
• SSAB Services is to increase revenue to SEK 4.5 billion during 2023 through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions

Main customer segments and applications:

• Heavy transport, incl. trailers, trucks, railway transport, agriculture and forestry
• Construction machinery, incl. lifting (dumpers, loaders and cranes)
• Material handling, incl. mining and recycling (crushers, buckets and conveyors