Sustainable steelmaker GravitHy announces company CEO

Noldin will lead the company in all its dimensions including engineering, construction, industrial commissioning, mobilisation of the necessary investments, and business development. He will also oversee the company’s first planned plant in the area of Fos-sur-Mer, Southern France, which is said to require €2.2 billion of investments, and hopes to create over 3,000 direct and indirect jobs for the region when fully operational.

After starting his career at Tecnored, a company developing a revolutionary new ironmaking technology owned by iron ore giant Vale, Noldin then spent a decade in Belgium in leadership positions at Lhoist, a major player in the lime, dolomite and minerals industry. More recently, Noldin was the head of technology strategy of one of the largest steel production companies in Latin America, Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional, in Brazil, where he was in charge of decarbonization issues.

In support of Europe’s ‘Fit for 55’ package, which is aimed at hard-to-abate industries, GravitHy is aiming to contribute to decarbonizing the steel industry by producing and using low-carbon hydrogen to produce decarbonized Direct Reduced Iron (DRI). The DRI will be used either on site as a raw material for green steelmaking or marketed worldwide as Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI).

Karine Vernier, GravitHy’s consortium spokesperson and CEO of EIT InnoEnergy France, commented: "The transformation of energy-intensive industries requires the industrial deployment of pioneering innovations coupled with strong leadership. With José Noldin, we have both, and I am very pleased that he is taking the helm."

Speaking of his role, José Noldin said: “I’m delighted to be joining GravitHy as CEO. Following a career dedicated to the sector and driven by a commitment to innovation and decarbonization I am fully committed to mobilise all my experience and expertise for this ambitious industrial project. I am privileged to lead such a significant development in the industry.

The roadmap for the mining and metallurgy sector proposed by the French government sets the ambition of reducing CO₂ emissions by 35% by 2030 from the integrated steel industry compared to 2015 emissions. Achieving this goal requires the rapid scaling up of innovative, lower-emission solutions. GravitHy will play a central role in achieving these goals."

GravitHy, which was founded by a consortium of world-class cross-sector partners and launched earlier this year in June, aims for its first plant in France to be operational by 2027, subject to the required regulatory approvals, with construction commencing in 2024. Its ambition is to produce an annual throughput of 2Mt of DRI.