January 21, 2020
PAO Severstal (MICEX-RTS: CHMF; LSE: SVST), one of the world’s largest
vertically integrated steel and mining companies, announces that it has
invested in Dutch company Airborne, a global leader in developing digital
automation platforms for the production of composite parts, and products with
integrated composites. Severstal joins other investors in this investment
round, including Pangaea Ventures, the leading advanced materials venture
capital fund, and SABIC, the world’s third largest diversified chemical
company.
Airborne has developed and brought to market a unique set of digital
technologies that increase the efficiency of carbon fiber composite production
by automating the production process. The company is in the process of
commercialising the automated production cells and software. At its facilities
in the Netherlands and the UK, Airborne manufactures composite products for a
broad range of sectors including the automotive, construction, shipbuilding,
aerospace, electronics and wind power industries.
Using automation cell technology can help reduce the cost of producing
composite products and their development cycle while ensuring consistent
quality at a high production speed.
Working together with Severstal’s technical development and quality
department, Airborne will examine the potential of integrated solutions based
on composites and steel, and Severstal will offer its clients the opportunity
to test these integrated solutions.
George Gogolev, Head of Severstal Ventures, commented:
“With our investment in Airborne, we are continuing to move towards our goal
of achieving integration between metals and composites in the innovative
solutions we offer our clients. We believe this technology could transform the
composites market in the next five to seven years by significantly reducing the
price of end products. This will impact the metal market by enabling us to
offer our customers new materials with unique properties that are not currently
achievable in steelmaking. For comparison, composites can be up to five times
as strong, up to twice as tough, and up to four times less prone to fatigue,
and also up to 75% lighter than steel. However, this does not mean that steel
as a material will be completely replaced by composite analogues. On the
contrary, we are convinced that, going forward, the greatest demand from key
industries will be for a “multi-material offer” of composites containing a
combination of materials, including steel. It should also be noted that the
Airborne deal was closed within two weeks, which is very fast by corporate
venture fund standards.”
Andrey Laptev, Director of Business Development and Corporate Venture
Projects at Severstal, added:
“Our deal with Airborne resonates with one of the strategic priorities of
our Company strategy – to pursue new opportunities. We are actively working
with market niches within the sector that have potential for exponential
growth. In particular, we are looking at advanced materials that could reach
the steel market in the near future, as well as at technologies for their
production. Together with Airborne, we plan to explore opportunities to move
towards integrating metals and composites in our innovative customer solutions.
With Airborne’s unique automation platform, customers will be able to place
their orders directly on the appropriate portal, and receive an affordable
product that meets their needs. On a global scale, we see huge potential for
composite materials, the market value of which is estimated at $90 billion.
Severstal is delighted to provide the team at Airborne with our support, and to
be its first partner from the steel industry.”
Arno van Mourik, CEO Airborne:
“We are very enthusiastic about this investment and collaboration with such
a large and integrated steel company. It was a pleasure working with the
Severstal Ventures team on this deal. We much appreciate the constructive
approach, good discussions and speed of execution. We see that the global trend
of lightweighting as a way to drive sustainability employs a great deal of
multi-material solutions that combine the strength of metals and composites.
While the steel industry is already very industrialised and efficient, the
composite industry expresses a strong need to drastically reduce cost and
improve efficiency, in order to accelerate the adoption of composites and
enable its full potential. This can be done by automating the manufacturing
process, as well as by digitalising the full value chain to make design and
manufacturing highly efficient, easy and flexible. We very much look forward to
the collaboration”.
