The Cost of Steel: Health, Environment, & Responsibility – Hans van den Berg, CEO of Tata Steel NL

Oh, you could have told me that before. Thank you. Yeah, why should we go, but why should we stay? I think there is several arguments for that. I always start with the product. The product, steel, steel is everywhere around us. We are sitting here below steel and without this steel structure, we would not be sitting here. But steel is everywhere. I'll say we wash in steel, we live in steel, we drive in steel, we live in steel, the whole society is built on steel. And I think that, and with steel, you've said it here, the cost of steel. I think that we should not export that, but yeah, make it where we use it. And actually, we use a lot of steel as well. Each people, everyone in the Netherlands is using almost one kilogram of steel per person per day. So this is not small, and that is still, it's in batteries, it's in cars, it's in trains, it's everywhere. So one kilogram per person per day, and that is exactly what we make in Emuida. So that is, well, sort of a general view on what we make. We make high-quality steel, we don't make this kind of steel, we make high-quality steel which is exported, especially to other countries in Europe, and then comes back as products. So we export the decoil, and we get back the car. So that's the general. Then, of course, because that's what the debate is all about, we will have to do that in a clean and green way, and circular, by the way. Maybe we come to that, but steel is an excellent circular product. Well, about clean, we will come to talk here. We are not as clean as we want and must be, and we are not as green as we will have to be in the future and as fast as possible. I think that we have in Emuida a great opportunity to do that, and location here in the Netherlands is really good, it's close to the sea, there's a lot of wind power coming from the sea in the future. There's infrastructure, there is roads, railways, but also pipelines for natural gas and in the future for hydrogen gas. All this kind of infrastructure. We're close to Amsterdam, so there's a lot of higher educated people living in Amsterdam and coming to do nice technical work in our company. So that's all the positives. And then at the same time, we have a lot of local communities very close to the plant, so the density is high, the population density is very high. So the challenge is to do that in a responsible manner, I recognize.

Well, to simply build it from scratch is not so easy. So if you can build it on what you already have, and we will replace almost half of the site of the company, but the other half is the processing of the steel. We're talking a lot about, say, liquid steel production. But after that, it's being rolled, it's being covered with zinc, for instance. That's why the cars don't rust and this material also is not going to rust. So all that stuff we have in Emuida at this moment. And then if you look at the whole map of, let's say, Europe, if you talk about strategic autonomy, they usually really don't look only to the Netherlands, but to Europe as a whole. You see some favorite spots to do that there, of course, Sweden, there's a lot of talk about steel making in Sweden, where you have the hydro power, not hydrogen, hydro power, for instance. Mines are quite close. Mines are close. So that's indeed, in some respects, this ideal spot, although they are building there, because hydro power is also limited, they're building there windmills as well, and so it's attracting a lot of industry. So you can't make all the steel in Europe simply in the north of Sweden. And then for the rest, you see that the coastal sites, so our site, but also Dunkirk, south of France, for instance, those are also famous or favorable sites. For all kinds of logistical reasons. So yeah, and our site is also ideal in that respect.

Yeah, carbon for steel making is not just to fire the furnaces or to increase temperature, but it's actually a chemical reactant. So it's doing the reduction from iron oxide, which is in ores or rust, for instance, and make it into iron. And that's where the main amount of carbon is used for, also to increase temperature. And all the carbon that comes in, in the end, becomes CO2. And that's a very energy, but also carbon intensive process. That's why it's called hard to abate. And we thought that, let's say 10 years ago or so, we thought that the abatement or the changing over from the steel industry would be much farther away than the timelines that we are now talking about. Of course, another substance that has also reductant capacity is hydrogen. So that's why it's from, let's say, carbon, coal, or natural gas into hydrogen as fast as possible. And that takes a lot of carbon, and there's a lot of energy, and there's a lot of CO2.

No, yeah. There's a lot of figures going on. And actually, the figures are against the figures of 1990. And since 1990, we already improved 17%. So to reach that goal, we still need between 35% and 40%. So our plan is to, that is the biggest, actually the biggest step. We have two big blast furnaces as production units. We will take out the biggest one first, and then the smaller one. And then there is a lot of other kinds of equipment, which also use either natural gas or some other energy source. So it's a sort of three-stage plan. Of course, there's overlap. But the first big step will be before 2030.

Well, 40% plus 17% is close to 55%. OK. Let's be, if it could go faster, we would do it. So this is such a large project, one could say, or such a short timeline. And that's where your question, I think, is valid. Should you not have started before this? I think we've been working on this since, well, sort of the Paris Agreements, 2015-16. We've worked for a long time on developing the CCS option. So then you keep your steel plant.

Carbon capture and storage, and the pipe solution. So you start with the steel plant as it is. And you catch the off-gases from that, take out the CO2, store it under the North Sea, and use what's left in that.

I have one already, yeah.

Thank you so much. Exciting stuff.

We go as fast as we can with our plan. That's one. And I'm not sure that the rest of the Dutch society is also going at the same pace. If we look at the demands that have been, the climate agreements with industry, with transport, with, let's say, the houses and all that, I think industry is, in general, is quite up to a high pace, yeah.

It should, of course, I understand the dilemma. We have to go as fast as possible. The CO2 we emit is for 100 years in the atmosphere.

If we could, I'm open for options and discussions. Maybe not for the discussion of exporting it, exporting the emissions.

Well, yeah, you can discuss it, of course, but it won't help. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, green steel is normal steel in the end. It's not a different substance, but it's made in a green way. And to be completely green, you have to make it without any emission of carbon. And yeah, that's what we call green steel. And of course, there's different, let's say, stages in that. So when we start with the first step of our project, this machine will first work on natural gas and can then be switched over to hydrogen. The faster the hydrogen is available at, let's say, sort of economic prices, we can switch it over. But already in the first stage, going from coal to natural gas, there's a huge step that is being made.

Yeah, it's a good question. What you could do, and we already do that, is certificate it. So you say, well, I have 50% less CO2 in the way I produce it, so I call 50% of my total production green steel. And that's also done by green electrical energy, for instance. You can buy certificates in that sense.

It's not where you want to be in the end. And that's why I think full transparency and right norm-setting and reporting in that sense should make it very clear what you're doing.

After the second step and the projects that we have to have done there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So the hydrogen has to be made in a green manner. All the hydrogen is the same, but green hydrogen is made green. Blue hydrogen, for instance, is made out of natural gas. And then again, with CCS. So that's what they call blue hydrogen.

I don't think that you can say that, no. Because in the transition of making the hydrogen, energy is lost.

Generally. So best is to use, if you, for instance, make it out of windmills, of electrical energy, to use as much as possible the electrical energy in a direct manner. But for the reduction processes, you need the hydrogen, and that's not very energy-efficient in the end. We will be using, by the way, a lot of green electrical energy as well in our process, because of the electrical furnaces that are also taken over.

I don't know. On top of mine, it's about 30%, but I'm not sure.

That can be, yeah.

Yeah, we expect that that's, of course, a commercial something, of course, but I think between 25% and 30%. So that if you calculate, that's a lot, but if you calculate it in the way it is used, for instance, in a tin can, the tin can will be maybe a few cents more expensive. And in a car, for instance, it's a couple of hundred euros. So it's not that the car is twice as expensive.

Yeah, so the amount of steel in the car is, let's say, 1,000 kilograms, about 1,000 euros, something like that.

So if you lose, let's say, 30% then of the raw energy that's been used in green hydrogen, and the end product is also around 30% more expensive. And so green hydrogen is then, at this time, less energy efficient and more expensive. And considering that there will be a lot of competition, so to speak, in demand for green hydrogen, it's not certain that future demand will be able to, sorry, future supply will be able to scale enough to meet future demand. So it's possible that these costs that you mentioned will also increase. So we're also wondering then, why are you betting big, so to speak, on green hydrogen?

Yeah, to get rid of the CO2.

Yeah, this is the only pure way to do it. Another thing maybe to be mentioned is that, of course, this is all, let's say, fresh steel. So it's steel made in a, well, I don't think it's a totally linear way because you keep reusing it. But the first time you dig it out of the ground. So once it is steel, you can reuse the steel by simply melting it again and process it. And then you have, again, that will be more and more. So in the plants, we will have to include more and more reuse of steel.

Yes.

Yeah, the current plants, we are at about 30%, 35%. But we are not at the end.

2035, I would say.

No, I don't have that yet.

We will see that there will be more and more electrical furnaces just simply melting, electric arc furnaces. And that will, in the end, remove the DRIs. But that will take some decades to go.

Well, it has to be available. So steel stays in the society for some time. Well, again, here, these steel bars above us, they will take maybe 30, 40, 50 years before they come back. So we will see it rising, the amount of reuse of steel. It can go faster because there is scrap, as it's called, is exported from Europe. But if all the steel would be made in Europe from recycled material, there's no scrap enough. So there will be sort of a balance going forward. And the world as a whole, because it's a world market, is still needing a lot of fresh steel. So the steel consumption in the world, for instance, in India, it's rising very fast. Africa will come as well. It will still be increasing for the next decades, we expect.

Well, another thing is to make the high qualities of steel, that is being done by fresh steel. So if you use scrap, scrap is a very... If you look at the scrapyard, for instance, it's a very, how do you say that, diverse product. There's a lot of paint on it. There's other kinds of metals in it. And from that scrap, you can't make the highest qualities of steel, which are used in, let's say, out of the form of cars, batteries, packaging kind of materials. This is the highest quality steel, very difficult to make. Very thin and coming thinner and thinner all the time, and should not leak, of course.

That's true, but we could diversify more than we do now, because we make everything via high quality. Also, because we don't only make the highest quality steel. We make a whole range of steels, of course. And if we could make certain steels which are less critical with more scrap, we will do so.

I don't think we are betting against that. We are increasing our amount of recycled steel in the current plans. How exactly step two of the plan is still to be determined could very well be that we choose therefore more recycled content. So you will see it phasing out over the, let's say, years or decades.

Depending, if there's hydrogen, it will be on hydrogen, but we expect that it will take one or two years.

Yeah, well, that is depending on competition as well. And it's depending on whether the customers are willing to pay a premium for green steel. That's an important question. And we see that already happening. So especially where the end users markets are sensitive to this. Take, for instance, the high-end cars. So you see we already have with Ford, we have a Memorandum of Understanding. We see Volvo moving, we see BMW moving, they are all moving and asking for us because they have their goals in 2030 or 2035 to also produce the whole car in a carbon-free manner, and then you need carbon-free steel as well. And that will come at a cost. And we see it in packaging also as well. So those are markets that are sensitive where the end consumers, ourselves, are willing to pay a premium to have it made in a green manner.

To be completely honest, to make the transition itself, where there is, as we see it, some market inefficiencies, because if the market would be completely efficient and there would be a complete level playing field, that would be the best situation. And then the business cases are easy to work out and all that. And we don't think that's the case. We see it already happening. The United States have their Inflation Reduction Act. Different governments in the EU are acting. And we have also asked help from our own government to be able to make the transition, moving towards a new commercial situation where there is, again, a clean competition, but at a higher price.

We have asked for support.

And that's also because we see that all the European steel companies are asking for this and are getting it. So Salzgitter in Spain, ArcelorMittal, ThyssenKrupp, they are even further than we are in this.

Well, it's a huge project. So there's a lot to have in place. So there is the financing, which we just talked about. There's also permitting. So we have started the so-called participation of the new plans. The last two weeks, we've been in several local communities to show what the plans are. And people can have influence on that. We have already 70 ideas, I understood, from these, which we will, one way or another, seem to incorporate. And that will have, in the end, has to lead to a permit. And then this is a whole process, of course, very important, because, well, the current issues that we have. Then there's technology development as well. So we have R&Ds working on how exactly are you going to make the transition from carbon-based to hydrogen-based. So there's, and all these paths are going in a parallel manner.

Hydrogen to be involved, infrastructure to be involved.

Yes.

Yeah.

Stakes are high. Stakes are high. And of course, CO2 rights, so taxation will kick in as well. Maybe that's good to mention, because it's such a large effect. And there's a lot of talk also about, let's say, subsidies of fossil industry. That's especially in the ETS system. We produce 6, 7 million tons of steel, and we emit a total 12 million tons of CO2. That's why we, well, let's say the number one, 12 million tons. Of those 12 million tons, we have 10 million tons of free rides. And 2 million tons we buy. And the amount of free rides depends on your distance to the benchmark. And this whole system was arranged to have a global level playing field. Now, we look now different to this. We want to reduce CO2 much faster. We want to make green transition. So in Europe, it's now said, well, we will reduce the ETS rights in the end to zero, the free rides. And instead of it, there will be a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is a tax shielding, a taxation of material coming from outside, which have a lot of CO2 in it. So then we have sort of a global level playing field again, but at a higher price. But that means that all the ETS rights will be gone. And if you calculate quickly, you see that the 10 million tons of free rides that we have now at a price of close to the 100 euros per ton of CO2 have a total value of close to a billion euros a year. So this whole transition is also driven by that. The faster we go in the CO2 reductions, the lever on that is much larger than in the past.

Yeah, I think that's a fair claim, yeah, because climate change is real, it is here. And so we have to move, and I think we have to move, especially in Europe, Western Europe, we have to lead this transition, I think. We've, yeah, we have, well, we've seen it here. We have consumed our carbon budget, actually. So making this transition, developing the technology, making the green steel, see how these market mechanisms work, all these kind of things, yeah. Where is that better to be done than here in Europe?

Well, there will be, let's say, how do you call it, a COP group, a group of high-end companies which will compete in this field. And then the matter is, of course, how fast will the demand go? Is the demand really ramping up as we see it now? Because there will be more and more green steel on the market. And a lot of these timelines are, let's say, in the second half of this decade, starting to produce. So we will see a completely different, yeah, market arena arising.

Yes, of course, we will be. You doubt it, I see.

No, no, no, I have never mentioned a billion euros. I cannot mention any number here.

No, I haven't.

Oh, the interviewer said it.

Okay, so it's a...

Is it a secret number, how much you will need?

Okay, why is it secret?

I think... Yeah, I do not know how exactly then the House of Representatives is influencing this, at what stage, I don't know.

No, I don't. No, I don't. Because we don't know exactly what will happen. If the market picks up quickly, we need less. I mean, subsidy is not our business model. It's not our way of... We ask for it because we need it to make the transition.

Huh?

Yeah, maybe in a sense. But it's not, let's say, an earnings model. It's not a way that we say, okay, now we have these subsidies. And that's the way we will keep running the business forever. We want to go back to a normal commercial situation as fast as possible.

It's a tough question. Well, I don't like it. And I understand it, I would say, partially, because I think the intentions that we have, the programs that we have, the hard work that we have done for the last years and that we expect to be doing until it's finished, I think that, I hope that that will get the chance to evolve and to make the transition. I think it's important for, well, let's say, the company, the thousands of people who are working there. I think it's also important for the communities around the steel plant. But I think it's, yeah, it's more, there's 8 billion people on our planet. And they want safe food, they want transport, they need transport, they have to have a, let's say, a roof above their head, all these kinds of things. And those are the products that we produce. We have to go from here to there. But I also understand the impatience. And as I've said before, yeah, maybe we could have started faster. So that also holds against me now, but that's the truth.

With hindsight, I would say that, well, especially with the program, which we call the CLEAN, so Clean Green Circuit, the green part, I think we could have picked that up quicker, yeah. I think so. So this was maybe the second half of our talk, we'll be about it, I think. Indeed. After the graphite emissions in 2018, and the big worries after that, we really picked up. And before that, we were improving over the years. If you look at all the graphs, you can easily see that the emissions have reduced, they reduced over the years. But we did not have the right discussion, I think, with the people around us, and did not pick up quick enough what their worries were.

Let's say, I hope we have hit the bottom of the valley.

So it's absolutely not where we want to be.

Hmm?

Yeah, it's up to me, I would say so.

Yeah, for a large part. You're right. Yeah, you're right.

I don't know if it would be much quicker. It's one of the things that has to be sorted out, well, let's say in the near future. Well, there is, of course, some ideas on how business models for the future will and would look like. Uncertainties are an important part of all this, and there's a lot of, yeah, uncertainties around the company. We just talked a little bit about the uncertainties in the communities, the coke and gas plant with the LOD that's there, but also the uncertainty on when will then the hydrogen be there, what will be the future markets, how will that look like, will the premium, will they be there? Yeah, I think the good development of business models and of financial models on how to, yeah, to finance a transition like this could be developed, I think. I'm not a real specialist in the end. Our CFO is much more, much better in this kind of thing. But I think that those things could really help. Yeah, reduction of risk, becoming, having more and more certainties, and maybe government can give some certainties in that sense as well, so that commercial lenders can also feel better about it. Maybe not the complete answer, but I understand your question.

That's a lot of statements and questions in one, I would say. Maybe I can say a little bit about it. We know, of course, all these investigations. And we looked upon it, and we looked in the cancer atlas, as it's called, the cancer map of the Netherlands. There is a difference which we tried to explain last week also in the House of Representatives about what's deposited, so the more coarse material which is deposited in the, well, especially where I can say, but also a little bit broader than that. And that's in the air. What are the air emissions? And if you look into that, the last report of the RIVM is about depositions. And they stated that this is the third time that they measure it in the last two years. And they could not really see an improvement in what is deposited on the ground. We have presented last week the measurements of the emissions in the air. So that's what you directly inhale. And then we see that over the years, a large decrease, and that's where a lot of our projects have been working on as well, is reached. And the question is now, why is it not visible in the depositions? Because we have with this what we call the RoadmapPlus program, which we started two years ago. We've done a lot of projects. Still, projects are running. The largest project still has to be delivered. The de-dusting of our pellet plant is also involving a de-NOx installation, so taking out the nitrogen oxides. That has to be delivered. Another thing to be delivered is a large windscreen, which is around our coal and especially coal fields, because we think that the pack that is found now on the ground, which is not good, is coal that is blown off our plants. So that is what we are still...

Yeah, that's a dilemma. And something that we are really also discussing a lot about, where we are taking continuous improvement measures as well. Operational improvements, maintenance programs to reduce the reductions from the emissions. In our airside emissions we have reduced last year 50% and more. So not the depositions on the ground, because that's coal that's... So that's what we can do. We can reduce and reduce emissions as fast as possible. And that's what our people are working hard on with all these projects.

I find that a difficult question. Of course. If there is some kind of damage, then we are responsible for that. Something has to be done. At the same time, if you study the cancer atlas, you see that we are really high in mesothelium, which is the cancer source caused by asbestos. That's really red around the company, but in the whole area there has been an asbestos factory as well, but also on our plant. And we use a lot of asbestos with high temperatures. You see the same in the industrial area in Den Helder, in Rotterdam, south of... And for that typical kind of cancer, there is the International Institute of Asbestos issues. So, if you have this kind of cancer and you have worked in our plants, there is a special regulation and you get paid for that. So that's one-on-one.

But lung cancer is very difficult.

Because there is a lot of influencing factors there. And the question is yeah, do we have a real influence and how large is this influence? And well, that is something I think we really should talk about together with experts, together with people in the surroundings, and of course our own people, because we feel responsible and we feel that let's say the health of our employees, the 9,000 plus the 30,000 that are very regular on our side, including the people around us.

Yeah, well, as I say, we will have to see what the influence from A to actually B is.

I don't know. That's what makes the discussion so difficult and the dilemma as well. But what we know, of course, about our own people, and I've said it before, our own people that are in our pension plan are older, generally, than they die older than average in the Netherlands. Every three years all the employees of our company get a medical check-up. So we can see quite well what the medical situation of our own people is on the plant and they're working there.

Yeah, but that was all settled. That was, I think, two or three years ago with an article in the Volkskrant and we dived into it and we changed the policy. And I must really say that that was a for me an eye-opener article, because I'm responsible for the whole thing, the whole policy setting, and we dived into it and what we do or what we did as a company, when a claim comes in specialists look upon it and say, how likely was it that it was caused here? And they were very strict. They were doing their job. They were very strict. And now we've said, yeah, if you've worked here for 30 years, we don't ask the questions anymore. We simply do it. So we changed the policy here and I feel a little bit ashamed that we had to do that because I think the way that is organized in the Netherlands is very fast, very clear. So we dealt differently with it after that.

I understand the reasoning but I think there are some flaws in that as well.

Flaws in the whole, in what you say. The deluxe installation which we are implementing now, the windscreen, that's all paid by ourselves. So 300, 350 million which we are spending, we don't ask, of course, because it's part of our, only for the big green transition, that's where we need a little push.

We bring, of course, much more benefits to the community. It's the steel products, that's one, but there's technology development, there's the whole R&D and technology development around hydrogen and we have what we call Techport which is a working institute together with the government and with the local training schools and all that, so that's also, let's say, an institute where we do a lot of innovations for the future. Well, our people pay hundreds of millions in income tax, for instance, so there's a lot of things around the company which make the value of the company and this has all been calculated by, I think, Oxford Economics or so, to show that the value of the company is, of course, much bigger than that.

Yeah, and what I just mentioned, the change of the ETS rights into the carbon border adjustment mechanism that will all be paid then in taxes, that will be slowly decreasing after we do the green transition, but the value of all those taxes are much higher than what we are asking now. So, it's not completely wrong, your line of reasoning, but there are some comments to be made on that as well.

No, I don't think that's really up to me, because there were some advices on such a company as well, and we are listening to that, I would say, because they stated that they looked at the government on their way of working, and they looked at the company, which they said they could have acted more proactively as well. And they're demanding, or they're advising, it's not demanding, they're advising to be more involved and more concerned about the emissions that we have, and the influence of the emissions on health. And we've always looked upon emissions in the sense of, do we fulfill our permits? And the permits are becoming stricter and stricter, if you look over time, there's more technology, there's more developments, and we will have to adhere to that as well. But really, being involved in okay, this emission, what exactly does it mean for the health and the, yeah, that's the discussion that we will have to have more and more, and that's why they look upon us.

No, I find that difficult to judge, because what basically they say is that both government and company should be looking more and thinking of starting with the health, and the effect on health. And not only with the process of how is the norm setting, and how is that implemented, and all this kind of thing. So I mean, I think that the relation between the company and the supervisors has always been very business-like in the sense of quite strict. And the mechanisms behind this, and how this, what the council is saying, how that is working, I cannot really have a...

Of course. Of course, and we are supervised all the time. The coke plant that we just talked about, we are on very intensive supervision for a certain amount of months. So there were supervisors constantly around the plant to see whether we were producing, and whether all the installation, etc., are working up to the standards. And that was their conclusion, so they stopped the intense supervision. So, yeah, generally, of course, we do that. And also the reports that we make, yeah, sometimes we pay for the report, as the reduction for the PEC said, the 50%, it was an outside consultant, which we paid for, of course. But it's an independent consultant, which you can audit and see how they have done that.

We don't know yet. Let's first wait and see. But the point there is not that we do not want to be supervised. We want to be sure that our people are not visible, are not recognizable on the cameras. And if that is a certainty, no problem. There's a lot of cameras around it, around our company, by the way, not only by the government.

That's a good question. I would say, generally, we do. But we have incidents. We've had the black snow and other dust emissions. And there was a part on the cooling of the slag pots. And, yeah, it ruled against us. So, in those cases, in those incidents, we did not fulfill our permits.

No, I don't think so. Especially not on these. Because these were really incidents. We report on incidents, and there are certain incidents that we report on, which are very closely related to daily operations. For instance, if you look at fumes coming out of the roof of our blast furnaces, we have that two or three times a day. And we have, we report that as incidents. So each day, we report two or three incidents. One could say, yeah, are those still incidents? Yeah, that's true. But generally, these four were definitely incidents. It's a big side, and I'm not downplaying it. I'm just saying, not everything is always going 100%.

We don't think the incidents have a big influence. If you calculate it.

But one could challenge that. But we have calculated how much this is upon the total of emissions, and it's a small percentage.

Well, they say nothing about the impact. They say, this should not happen. You're not allowed to do this.

Well, we have needed those pushes in the past, and maybe we will need some in the future. That would be shameful, of course. But I can mention a whole number of projects that have been fulfilled over the years. I think the big acceleration that we are looking for now, we are really pushed by this kind of expressions. It helps to speed up.

I think we will have to hurry up. That's what I think. But, yeah. I work there, I work for this. This is my goal. I'm 61 years, so hopefully I will see the first equipment being built and being operated.

I think so. Given that I can postpone my pension to 67, 68.

Oh, yeah. That would be great. It would be really great to see it all happening. You have very nice spots on the coast that you can look down on the company. That would be great. We could really see the skyline change. The chimneys being less and less and less. That would be great.

If you're asking if I sleep well, the answer is not really. You're right, there's a lot to do, but there's also a lot to be gained. You say our people say something about the activists. Yeah, that's true. That's stupid. They should not have done that. We are taking actions in that. At the same time, our people are being called Nazis, murderers, child murderers, windscreens are being broken, all these kinds of things are happening to our own people. That's what I'm also standing for, these 9000 and the 20-30,000 around it as well. So there's a lot to fight for and to act in a way that we can continue in one way or another in providing with all these services and products and developments and innovations.

Depends on how it's going. There's a lot of people who are retired around the company, also directors, who are still very much involved in the company. Almost on a daily basis, I get emails from them, what I should do better. It's almost like a community now. A very strong community.

Yeah, I would say so. Because if that's not so, there is no cause to exist. Maybe it's good to mention, be a part of the larger Tata Steel group, or Tata group, actually.

In which it's stated that the community is not another stakeholder of the company, but the very cause of its existence. I think that is very close to what we as Hoogovens in the past and up to now also have been standing for. We are there. We are part of the community, part of the society. Let's say the polarization that is now running up is hurting. It's hurting us, it's our employees, it's hurting people in the communities around it, also among each other. That's a situation which is not future proof.

Thank you.