Primary Metals

Your Challenges

The Primary Metals industry operates in a global and cyclical market. Recent growth and demand for metal has started an unprecedented worldwide increase in production capacity and competition is now tougher than ever.

Productivity, quality and profitability are the key concerns for the metals industry. In addition, the environmental impacts of the production processes are now under close scrutiny, warranted by ever-tightening environmental regulations and occupational health and safety standards.

Although other materials required for production are more highly regarded and considered for producing metal, without reliable water management, there is a real danger that productivity, quality and profitability will suffer.

Metal production requires vast volumes of water that must be delivered to a certain standard and quality. Standard practice is to recover and reuse up to 95% of the water used, which means to ensure product quality and reliability of production equipment, recycled water requires proper treatment. This treatment and disposal can account for a considerable part of the total water cost.

The large infrastructure on primary metals sites also means that effective maintenance of the water networks and leakage controls are also crucial for reducing cost and making water work more efficiently for the plant.

Our Solutions

Veolia Water has a long tradition of providing water management services to the primary metals industry, specifically for the process of steel, aluminium, non-ferrous metals and minerals. We understand that water management is not a core speciality of this industry and we can help free up the valuable internal resources needed to concentrate on production matters. By transferring this responsibility to Veolia Water we can supply a number of services:

Building, operating and maintaining new facilities
Managing and optimising existing effluent treatment plants
Site waste management services
Maximising water recycling and minimising waste production
Monitoring groundwater quality on industrial premises
Recovering contaminated ground water
Ensuring continuous compliance with environmental regulations
Optimising water management costs

Veolia Water has used its research and development resources to develop environmentally-friendly solutions that minimise this industry's environmental impacts and preserve natural resources. We know all aspects of sustainable water management and we can offer the competence needed in the efforts to:

Increase water recycling and reduce waste production
Reduce liquid discharge to nil, if required
Monitor ground water quality on industrial premises
Recover contaminated ground water to high quality water for production
Ensure continuous compliance with environmental regulations
Increase efficiency of water management costs

More Information

Our Case Study on the effluent treatment plant, boiler-house and waste management activities on-site at Corus Packaging Plus demonstrates our work in the area.