Steel Sustainability Australia (SSA) offers a new certification program that provides a clear pathway for steel businesses to operate more responsibly and transparently while being part of an environmentally and socially sustainable future. The SSA team has been working with several steel distributors, manufacturers, roll formers and fabricators on certification.
ACT Steelworks becomes the first company to achieve SSA certification
ACT Steelworks is the first company to achieve SSA certification. “It is great to get it over the line to complement our ASI Steelwork Compliance Australia (SCA) accreditation program for structural steelwork,” ACT Steelworks estimating manager Adam Perry said.
The SSA process was “quite thorough” and the company was confident it would lead to improved environmental, social and governance practices, Perry said. “We are currently doing a refresh of the ACT Steelworks brand and this will be great addition. SSA was very helpful in its approach.”
For more than 50 years, ACT Steelworks has delivered medium and large-scale commercial steel construction products, engineering, and commercial project management in the Canberra and surrounding region.
Australian steel manufacturers achieve SSA verified supplier status
Liberty Primary Steel, InfraBuild and BlueScope are the first manufacturing mills to become ‘verified suppliers’ under the SSA program. Verified SSA suppliers are steel mills who have been verified to meet best practice ESG standards in the manufacturing of their semi-finished steel products that are fabricated or processed by downstream steel businesses seeking SSA certification.
With most of the environmental and social impact occurring at the crude steel manufacturing end of the supply chain, it is imperative to ensure that the steel supply used as feedstock in fabricating and processing finished steel products is responsibly sourced.
Impacts of new sustainable building policy recommendations on steel suppliers
Steel suppliers impacted by proposed policy changes requiring builders and developers to build more low carbon, resilient and equitable buildings will benefit from the ASI’s SSA certification program. Among the eight key recommendations in the Property Council of Australia and Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) Every Building Counts 2.0 federal policy plan:
- minimum requirements for reporting and reducing embodied carbon for new builds and refurbishments to be introduced into the National Construction Code
- introduction of embodied carbon reduction requirements for government projects
- adoption of building sustainability rating systems such as Green Star and NABERS to drive sustainable outcomes in all new government projects and existing assets
- development of robust standards to support product manufacturers and importers to calculate and disclose embodied emissions content.
To achieve these obligations, government and project proponents will increasingly require more sustainable or ‘Green Star approved’ building products and materials.
The SSA certification program meets this obligation by assuring steel suppliers are meeting best practice environmental social and governance standards in fabricating or processing their finished steel products, and the steel feedstock is sourced from responsible steelmakers that are actively reducing their carbon emissions during manufacturing of semi-finished products.
It also rewards and encourages the development environmental product descriptions (EPDs) that provide transparent and comparable measurement of the carbon impacts for steel products. Certified SSA steel suppliers achieve good or best practice product recognition under Green Star rating tools.
For further information: Contact Jerusha Beresford (ASI Sustainability Manager) on ssa@steel.org.au or 0419 253 016
