voestalpine places its first sustainability loan

27 September 2019 |

voestalpine has successfully placed its first syndicated sustainability loan (Environmental Social Governance, ESG) for EUR 1 billion with its 13 most important banking partners. This sustainability loan runs to 2024 and replaces the previous loan which was also syndicated, i.e. financed by a group of banks. This makes the technology group one of the first companies in the industry to issue such an ESG-linked syndicated loan, the interest rate for which will also be linked to the Group’s sustainability performance. The ESG rating is issued by Sustainalytics, the leading global ESG ratings agency which has been measuring corporate sustainability for over 25 years.

The financing costs are tied to the development of the ESG rating: should this deteriorate, the financing costs rise, while improvements to the rating lower the costs of the loan. This underscores voestalpine’s efforts at sustainability. For decades the Group has been regarded as the environmental and efficiency benchmark for the industry. voestalpine has already invested more than EUR 2 billion in the environmental sector over the past years. In the business year 2018/19 the ongoing costs of operations for environmental systems came to EUR 299 million, and environmental investment amounted to EUR 66 million.

The Group aims to move away from coal, via bridging technologies, to achieve the most widespread possible use of CO2-neutral energy sources. An example of its efforts to this end is the construction of one of the world’s largest pilot plants for the CO2-neutral production of hydrogen at the voestalpine site in Linz.

The voestalpine Group

In its business segments, voestalpine is a globally leading technology group with a unique combination of materials and processing expertise. voestalpine, which operates globally, has around 500 Group companies and locations in more than 50 countries on all five continents. It has been listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange since 1995. With its top-quality products and system solutions using steel and other metals, it is a leading partner of the automotive and consumer goods industries as well as of the aerospace and oil & gas industries. voestalpine is also the world market leader in complete railway systems as well as in tool steel and special sections. In the business year 2018/19, the Group generated revenue of EUR 13.6 billion, with an operating result (EBITDA) of EUR 1.6 billion; it had just under 52,000 employees worldwide.