Message from Chairman
The current COVID19 pandemic has not only brought new challenges to our daily lives but also disturbed the global market and triggered crisis in many countries and economies. It has also challenged us to view and think differently in a quest to survive the crisis. Our ability to respond quickly to new situations depends on the pre-established foundation of everything we have been focusing on in the past few years, including business transformation, the development of flexible remote office tools and technologies, and employee engagement.
Our efforts in business transformation along with cost management and price and demand recovery in our main markets in the third quarter, allowed us to end the financial year as forecasted.
To support and build a culture of collaboration, inspiration, and best practices to achieve great results, we renewed our core values during 2020. This approach is reflected in our latest corporate statement of “Building the Future”.
There has been a world-wide growing significance or focus on Climate Change and the increasing calls for the “Green Steel Agenda” in our industry. The State of Qatar’s ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement, the 2050 National Low-Carbon Strategy, and the Qatar Government’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a lower level set new targets for our company to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The carbon dioxide intensity set a new short-term goal where we plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per ton of steel from 2021 through achieving a 3% reduction by 2023. This goal is supported by our specific activities on operational efficiency and the development of a Decarbonization Strategy. Qatar Steel is committed to sustainable development. We will continue to reduce our ecological footprint, reduce energy and resource consumption, and recyclability, thereby enabling us to increase the scrap recycling in feed-mix to 45%.
During 2020, we reviewed our mid-term strategy with a focus on investment in improving our occupational health and safety systems and environmental safety projects. Our operations directly affects the lives and health of our employees and local communities. In these challenging times for the health system, we support local health organizations and communities and will continue to do so. We modernized the factory’s medical infrastructure in 2020, enabling us to improve the effectiveness of medical services to our employees. As part of the new operating strategy, Qatar Steel’s Sales & Marketing activities have now been moved back into Qatar Steel from September 1, 2020. This strategy has a limited international component.
Qatar Steel contributes to the sustainable development of the region by creating job opportunities and improving the quality of life of its employees and their family. During the epidemic, we continued to support small and medium-sized enterprises, assisted in solving pressing social challenges, while protecting cultural heritage, and developing culture and education.
Looking forward to future growth and success.
Saad Rashid Al-Muhannadi
Chairman
