Permanent innovation is essential if voestalpine is to succeed in international and technologically sophisticated markets. The technology group has continuously expanded its research budget over the past decade, raising it by a total of 70 percent. Its current budget of EUR 184 million makes voestalpine one of Austria’s most research-intensive companies. Development focuses on the drive to digitalize the entire value chain, as well as on innovations for the mobility industry and CO2 reductions in steel production. voestalpine employs more than 700 researchers at 70 Group companies around the world and has secured over 3,000 proprietary patents.
For years the USA has been a key strategic market for voestalpine. With 48 sites in the US and a local workforce of around 3,500 employees, the Group makes a significant contribution to value creation in the country. During his visit to the Styrian voestalpine factory in Kindberg today, Trevor Traina, the United States Ambassador to Austria, expressed his personal interest in the Group’s activities and its economic relations with the USA. A guided tour through the high-tech seamless tubes production facilities was followed by a discussion with voestalpine CEO, Herbert Eibensteiner, and voestalpine Management Board Member and Head of the Metal Engineering Division, Franz Kainersdorfer.
voestalpine has successfully placed its first syndicated sustainability loan (Environmental Social Governance, ESG) for EUR 1 billion with its 13 most important banking partners. This sustainability loan runs to 2024 and replaces the previous loan which was also syndicated, i.e. financed by a group of banks. This makes the technology group one of the first companies in the industry to issue such an ESG-linked syndicated loan, the interest rate for which will also be linked to the Group’s sustainability performance. The ESG rating is issued by Sustainalytics, the leading global ESG ratings agency which has been measuring corporate sustainability for over 25 years.