Sustainable fUture steel Production and pEople Recruiting and skilling (SUPER)

SUPER is an EU-funded, two-year research project that addresses the steel industry’s key challenges: As a highly greenhouse gas-emitting industry, it must push ahead with decarbonisation, and at the same time deal with an ageing workforce and difficulties to recruit young talents. Instead of treating these challenges separately, SUPER creates synergies by combining technical R&D with talent development across industries, disciplines, and regions.

SUPER connects research to industrial application, supports digitalisation and innovation, and drives interdisciplinary collaboration. Through talent training, desk research, and stakeholder engagement, SUPER delivers insights and policy recommendations, boosting both the sector’s image and its impact.

At the heart of the project is a RACE (Raw and Circular Economy Expedition) event, a learning programme that will take place in the last week of August 2025 in Gliwice (Poland). Here, 45 young students will get the opportunity to visit three steelworks, a steel-related research institute as well as a museum on metallurgy in the region. The students will form workings groups to work on current challenges of the steel industry. Within the project, the participants’ view on the steel industry as a career path will captured and the event will be evaluated.

Additionally, further research of the urgent challenges of the steel industry will be carried out:

• A technology update / road map and an update of existing decarbonization scenarios
• An overview on industrial sector coupling relevant to the steel industry
• A review of already existing recruitment and qualification activities
• A number of events will be carried out to disseminate and discuss the results of the projects: webinars on decarboniation and image/recruiting, a joint workshop with Skills4EII, three workshops with experts from the European Steel Technology Platform ESTEP, as well as a final dissemination event. An advisory board will accompany the SUPER activities.

Project partners: vDEH, RINA/CSM, K1-MET, TU Dortmund, EIT RawMaterials, SSSA, Górnośląski Instytut Technologiczny: Łukasiewicz.

Associated partners: ESTEP

The following methods are used in the SUPER project:

• Desk research for identifying existing materials / literature (esp. with regard to technology, decarbonisation as well as skills / training)
• Two-parted survey to evaluate the RACE event and understand better the view of the RACE participants on the steel industry as a career path
• Interviews with participants and experts
• Webinars and workshops, as well as further events to disseminate and discuss the results

All in all, the project has five work packages:

• WP1: Management
• WP2: Technology update
• WP3: Recruiting/skilling RACE
• WP4: Dissemination & Communication
• WP5: Future work

• Organisation, implementation and evaluation of the training and recruitment event RACE
• Research on decarbonisation and technology in the steel industry
• Review of existing recruitment and qualification activities in the steel industry
• Organisation of events / workshop / webinars to disseminate und discuss the results of the project

www.project-super.eu