PAO Severstal : Severstal becomes worldsteel Steel Sustainability Champion

April 13, 2021

PAO Severstal, one of the world's leading vertically integrated steel and steel-related mining companies, has been recognised as a Steel Sustainability Champion by The World Steel Association (worldsteel). Every year, the Steel Sustainability Champions Programme commends those steel companies that are most clearly demonstrating their commitment to sustainable development. This is the first year that Russian corporates have been included among the programme's champions.

When choosing the leaders in sustainable development, worldsteel takes into consideration material efficiency, environmental management systems, lost time injury frequency rate, employee training, investment in new processes and products and economic value distributed. Moreover, the steelmakers are required to submit their Life Cycle Inventory data to worldsteel's data collection programme, covering more than 50% of the company's crude steel production data and from within the last 5 years old.

Alexander Shevelev, CEO of Severstal, commented:

'As a socially responsible company, Severstal regards the contribution it makes to the lives of future generations as fundamentally important. Therefore, the environmental initiatives at our assets, our climate agenda and the development of the regions where we operate are priorities for the Company. We are very proud to become a champion of sustainable development alongside the world's largest steel companies. To be recognised for our achievements by the World Steel Association means a lot to us, but we cannot afford to become complacent and stop here. We must continue to focus on reducing of injuries, reducing our pollutant emissions, and, of course, reducing the Company's greenhouse gas emissions by 3% by 2023, in line with our stated target. In addition to this, we are focused on improving the energy efficiency of our production processes and maximising the recycling of industrial waste. I am sure that these efforts will help us to further improve our leadership in sustainable development'.

In 2020, Severstal increased its investment in environmental protection measures by 1.7 billion rubles to 2.67 billion rubles (Severstal invested 938 million rubles in 2019).

Severstal publishes an annual Sustainability Report, which lists the Company's initiatives under its six priority UN Sustainable Development Goals. In December 2020, MSCI revised Severstal's ESG rating from CCC to B. Severstal has improved its positions in the rating's Ecology section, with the experts noting the Company's progress in the areas of 'Climate change', 'Water Resources Management', 'Biodiversity', 'Emissions and waste'. The rating upgrade is further confirmation that Severstal's work in ESG and its aim to be as open as possible are being recognised by the investment community.