Outokumpu is a leading producer of sustainable stainless steel globally. The cornerstone of our business is enabling growth and innovation through sustainable stainless steel solutions to benefit modern society for generations to come.

Sustainability is integrated into all our operations, activities and decision making, from the purchasing of the materials to production and logistics and we expect our business partners, subcontractors and suppliers to follow similar standards.

Leader in sustainable steel production

Outokumpu is the world leader in sustainable stainless steel production. We have significantly reduced our carbon footprint and we are clearly below industry average. Outokumpu has set ambitious targets on this field and our CO2 emission intensity is expected to be further reduced by 20% by 2023 against the baseline of 2014–2016. Outokumpu is committed to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The initiative considers companies’ greenhouse gas reduction targets “science-based” if they are in line with the level of decarbonization required to keep global temperature increase below 2°C compared to pre-industrial temperature. Outokumpu follows the convergence criteria of steel industry’s decarbonization approach: to reduce emission intensity to 0.92 t CO2 per tonne of crude steel by 2050. Specific electricity emissions follow the electricity decarbonization approach, where the specific emission reduction target is 95% by 2050.

Business based on circular economy

As a material, stainless steel is strong, corrosion-resistant, durable and hygienic: in many ways, it is the perfect answer to global challenges such as resource scarcity, urbanization, and global climate and water challenges. Steel is the world’s most recycled material. In fact stainless steel is 100% recyclable and suffers no degradation during reprocessing.

Our business is based on the circular economy, as our most important raw material is recycled steel. Together with metals recovered from waste products and by-products of the production process, it enables the recycled content of our stainless steel to be raised to the highest level in the market. In 2019, the recycled content was 89.6%, significantly higher than the global industry average of 50%.

Chrome makes stainless steel stainless. Outokumpu has its own chrome mine and ferrochrome works and that makes us uniquely self-sufficient. As our ferrochrome operations CO2 footprint is only 42% of industry average, it gives us a sustained competitive advantage in our carbon emissions.

Outokumpu is a signatory to the UN Global Compact and has committed to contributing to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We have defined five SDGs that are the most material to our operations and sustainability themes.

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Sustainability strategy
Protecting the climate
Circular economy
Commitments and initiatives