From 29 to 30 October 2025, the ESTEP Annual Event 2025 took place in Udine, where the IOB was represented by our colleagues Thomas Echterhof and Johannes Losacker.
After last year’s event took place at Voestalpine in Linz, this year Danieli Automation invited participants to Udine in northern Italy. On the day before the event, participants had the opportunity to visit the nearby ABS steelworks and then gathered at the University of Udine library for the conference over the following two days.
The overarching theme of the conference was the decarbonisation of the steel industry, which was complemented by topics such as digitalisation, sector coupling and energy efficiency. Our colleague Thomas Echterhof moderated a presentation session on decarbonisation. During the conference, various projects in which the IOB is involved were presented, including the Syrius project on high-temperature electrolysis, as well as the HyInHeat and Twinghy projects, which Johannes Losacker presented in a talk on the application of computational fluid dynamics simulations to hydrogen combustion in the heating processes of the steel industry.
In addition to numerous presentations, further initiatives and projects were presented during a poster session, which provided an opportunity for questions and in-depth discussions. The exchange continued in a relaxed atmosphere during dinner in the historic city centre.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to ESTEP and Danieli Automation for organising the event and look forward to the next Annual Event in 2026.
Further information about the projects: