During the Covid pandemic, we have kept our operations ongoing mainly by working from home offices, but also by supporting our customers at their sites. Safety has been and continues to be our top priority. I am happy to report good progress in our safety KPI’s - Metso Outotec LTIR is currently at 1.0.
We have also advanced in our sustainability journey – Metso Outotec is committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 C with targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. We have launched an all-encompassing approach to sustainability, Planet Positive. To serve our customers’ sustainability needs and to increase the size of our ecological handprint, we will focus on further growing our sustainable offering in all our businesses, including Hydrometallurgy. We are extremely proud that Corporate Knights has once again listed the 100 most sustainable companies, and we were ranked on the 8th place.
Our product development activities support our sustainability journey. I would especially like to mention our R&D investments in battery precursor production and battery recycling technologies. Quite recently, we launched elution and goldroom solutions package for gold plants. This completes our full value chain offering for gold processing. Battery chemicals and gold processing remain focus areas in our R&D. Our aim is to combine our competitive reactor and agitation portfolio with digital measurement and optimization products to enable higher yields and savings in energy consumption.
We see the market activity currently on a high level while recovering from the pandemic. Since the last newsletter, we have announced significant contracts with our customers including a zinc plant delivery to Russia, tankhouse equipment to China, LiOH processing equipment to Russia and just recently, a copper smelter and tankhouse delivery to Indonesia.
Lastly, I would like to introduce a few recent nominations in our Hydrometallurgy team. Mr. Markus Lehtonen was nominated as Head of Hydrometallurgy Services. He and his team will support our customers in spare parts, modernizations and expert services. We have also established a new Hydrometallurgy Digital Solutions and Services product group which is led by Mr. Christian Binder. Christian and his team help our customers in matters like intelligent sensors, automation, digital twins, process optimization and virtual trainings just to name a few.
I wish you all a very successful end of 2021 and look forward to be able start meeting you in person during the coming months.
Best regards,
Mikko Rantaharju
