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Panellists:
Chris Bandmann, Senior Analyst, Wood Mackenzie
Vuslat Bayoglu, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Menar
Makoto Matsuura, Senior Manager, Nippon Steel
Rodrigo Torres da Costa Torres, Gerente de Área de Preservação de Vida Util das Baterias de Coque, ArcelorMittal Tubarão
K.G.Venkatesan, Managing Director, Fosbel India Private Ltd
Stanislav Zinchenko has 15-year experience in consulting for manufacturing companies. He has expertise in operational management and supply chains. Team leader and consultant in international projects in the field of green policies, green energy transformation, circular economy. Stanislav has a MA in International Economics at Kyiv National Economic University.
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Pushpa Ambrose holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering, an MBA in Finance, and a PG
Diploma in Industrial Safety and Fire Safety. Currently serving as the General Manager Safety at the new Steel Melting Shop-3 of Bhilai Steel Plant, a part of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). With expertise in managing thermal and hydraulic regimes of 7m tall Coke Oven Batteries, she has also led the construction and rebuilding of battery complexes. Pushpa's strategies have ensured 100% safety in gas line network maintenance through introducing U seals and in steel melting shops through innovative approaches. Recognized with numerous awards including the National Young Women Trainer Award, IIM’s MECON Award, Best paper award in 77th Annual Technical Meeting of The Indian Institute of Metals and International Conference on Metals, and Best Safety Officer Award at BSP 2023, her contributions extend to numerous paper presentation on coke making improvements, decarbonisation strategies, and steel safety. As a distinguished faculty, Pushpa imparts knowledge on management, technical,
and safety topics at BSP.
Chris Bandmann joined Wood Mackenzie in January of 2023. He is responsible for delivering comprehensive research coverage of the Atlantic basin’s metallurgical coal sector including supply, demand, pricing and costs, with a primary focus on Europe.
Prior to joining Wood Mac Chris worked at CRU, performing market analysis on the European steel markets.
Chris holds an MSc and a BSc in Economics from the University of Exeter in the UK.
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Dr. James Stevenson is head of research in coal, metals and mining at McCloskey by OPIS, a Dow Jones company. Dr. Stevenson’s expertise includes supply, demand, and price dynamics of global coal, iron ore, steel, and ferrous scrap. He also has extensive experience in trading, M&A, and business development.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Stevenson worked in commodity trading, most recently at Mercuria Energy Trading, and before then at Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy (now Castleton Commodities). He also worked in energy trading at Eraring Energy (now part of Origin Energy) in the Australian utility industry.
Dr. Stevenson holds undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Sydney, and a PhD from Yale University.
Barry Tudor has been a mining industry leader for two decades and is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Pembroke Resources. Through strategic development and value enhancement he has successfully built several steelmaking coal enterprises and has led operations through all stages of the commodities cycle. After developing the billion dollar Olive Downs Complex from greenfield to production in 8 years, Pembroke Resources is now a significant steelmaking coal enterprise with operations in Australia and Indonesia, producing over 7mpta. The Olive Downs Complex is currently expanding production to over 12mtpa. The success of the billion-dollar development has been in large part due to a dedicated focus to create a “model mine” utilising the latest approaches to mining while meeting and exceeding today’s demanding standards.
Economist specialized in Finance with a master’s degree in government and public Affairs. He has extensive experience in mining resource governance, he has served as Technical Director of Mines, Director of Mining Formalization and Vice Minister of Mines of Colombia. He has also been a member of the boards of directors of the National Mining Agency and the Colombian Geological Survey, as well as a member of the International Council of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Consultant on issues of Transparency of the extractive industry, Human Rights and Business, community relations and prior consultation with ethnic communities working for various entities such as the International Financial Corporation IFC of the World Bank group and the Intergovernmental Forum on mining, minerals, metals and sustainable development IGF. Currently, he is the Executive President of the National Coal Producers Federation, Fenalcarbón.
Oana Niculita is the Head of Sales and Marketing of John M Henderson, the Scottish engineering company, one of the world’s leading suppliers of Coke Oven Machinery.
Oana has been working in the coke making industry for more than a decade and has had the opportunity of visiting many Coke Making plants in the world, witnessing firsthand the technical and operational challenges of the coke making operators worldwide. Oana’s main interests lie in the environmental and technological aspects of the coke-making, with special focus on developing technological solutions for improving the quality of the air and life for people working and living near the coke batteries.
Oana is a Chartered Manager and a member of the Coke Oven Managers Association in the UK, as well as a regular speaker at coke making congresses worldwide. Professional qualifications include an Honours degree in Business Administration, Masters Degree in Economics from the Universities of Freiburg, Germany and Lisbon, Portugal and a PhD in development with the University of Dundee, Scotland. She has worked as a business consultant for major multinational companies and has published a number of books and papers in the areas of strategic marketing.
Rodrigo Torres is a seasoned Mechanical Engineer with over 26 years of experience in the steel industry, specializing in maintenance. He holds postgraduate qualifications in Logistics, Business, Production Engineering, and Maintenance Reliability. Throughout his career, Rodrigo has excelled in various areas, including the maintenance of metallic structures, pipelines, locomotives, railways, power plants, and coke machines. He has successfully tackled major challenges such as replacing power plant boilers, refurbishing railway guide cars, and enhancing the reliability of coke guide cars, charging cars, and push machines. At ArcelorMittal Tubarão, Rodrigo serves as a specialist in maintaining locomotives, wagons, railways, and coke plants. His expertise extends to maintenance planning for power plants and coke plants, and he plays a crucial role in ensuring the reliability of coke machines, CDQ, and gas reversion systems. Additionally, he has held leadership positions as the line manager for the maintenance of coke machines, CDQ, and the preservation of coke batteries.
Mr. Huang Yunlai is from ACRE Coking & Refractory Engineering Consulting Corporation, MCC, acting as the Marketing Director, Europe & America. He has been working in coke making industry for over 14 years and is now a dedicated professional in implementation and delivery of international coking projects. He has been deeply involved in dozens of coking projects in India, Brazil and Indonesia etc. in the scope of consultation, feasibility study, engineering and project implementation, through which he has gained deep understanding of plant-wide coke making technologies and the trends in coke making industry. His qualifications include Master’s Degree and National Registered Consulting Engineer.
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Alessio Ferraris is currently serving as Technical Sales Manager and Head of Technical Service for Coke Making industry at Paul Wurth Italia S.p.A., part of SMS group.
Alessio Ferraris has 12-year experience in providing state-of-the-art solutions for Coke Making industry. He gained his expertise in design, engineering, commissioning, production of coke oven working as Senior Process Engineer.
He holds Bachelor and Master Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a Postgraduate Master Course in Industrial Plant, Engineering and Technologies (MIPET) at University of Genoa (Italy).
Yusuke Shimobe is the Manager of the Coke Making Technical Department in the Ironmaking Division at Kimitsu Works. He holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Engineering from Miyazaki University, graduating in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Shimobe joined the company in 2017 as part of the Coke Making Technical team and has steadily risen through the ranks. His specialties include improving coke plant operations, introducing new coke making and gas purification processes, and formulating capital investment plans for coke plants. With over 6 years of experience, Shimobe brings valuable expertise in optimizing ironmaking operations through efficient coke production.
Mr. Dipankar Banerjee is heading the coke business unit of Fosbel in India along with new business development responsibilities for cement & non-ferrous markets. He is a Ceramic Engineer with more than 30 years of professional experience in leading refractory & ceramic companies (Saint Gobain, ACC Refractories, Vesuvius & now Fosbel) in P&L management, technical sales & marketing, business development, product management & refractory application technology in Iron & Steel, Non-Ferrous, Power Generation, Cement & Ceramics market segments.
Since 03/2023 Zeynep has been a Process Engineer at thyssenkrupp Uhde GmbH, Dortmund, Germany. Responsibilities included:
- Process Engineering for Gas Treatment in Coke Plants
- Process Design for the production of Ammoniumthiosulfate
- Research and Development projects
In 2022: PhD and Research in field of Reaction Engineering, Leibniz Institute for Catalysis e.V., Rostock, Germany
- Topic: Mechanistic and kinetic analysis of the water effect on the activity and selectivity in the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) over metal oxide catalysts
- Development of new catalyst systems, physical chemical characterization and concept development for the elucidation of the reaction mechanism
In 2016: Master Studies in Process Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany and Bachelor Studies in Mechanical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
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Mateusz Klejnowski has been involved in the coke industry since the beginning of his career. He is currently the Head of Development Office at JSW KOKS S.A., one of the largest producers of coke and by-products in Europe. He also works as a manager of R&D projects, including strategic projects for JSW Capital Group.
His areas of interest include: new technologies, renewable energy sources and environmental protection.
Currently, in cooperation with his parent company and the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in implementation, funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Poland.
Henrik Lund, holds 26 years of experience in strategic sourcing and management. The past 12 years in the role as Lead Buyer of carbon and silicon materials for the Eramet Group, in charge of developing and implementing sourcing strategies to meet the needs of nine smelter plants, with an annual consumption of close to 1 million tons. The past 5 years leading supplier innovation projects for the development of biogenic material to replace fossil carbon. Prior to joining Eramet, Henrik held various management and director positions in the renewable energy sector for 14 years.
Herman Edin is currently serving as a project manager and sales within the refractory business at LIMAB, part of Lizmontagens Thermal Technologies that is one of the largest refractory contractor in the world with more than 25 subsidiaries around the world. He started working with refractories in 2012 and worked in iron and steel, nonferrous, pulp & paper, incinerators and heating plant linings. Today he is mostly involved with brownfield plants but since they have a very high ambition of turning the steel industry green in Sweden and Europe, he has participated in several greenfield projects, for example being able to sinter magnetite with fossil free fuel, reduction of iron with hydrogen and calcination of limestone. His expertise is finding a sustainable and efficient way of making the refractory lining that is also commercially accepted. Since starting at LIMAB during 2020, he has increased the sales within the refractory segment with 100% during the period 2020-2023 and secured long term maintenance contracts with some of thier customers through a very high level of transparency and performance.
Maintaining long term relationships is critical within any business but especially in the art of iron and steelmaking.
Mr. Bolaca received his master's degree in Management of Business Administration in 2002 from La Salle University – Philadelphia, USA . He started his career in US and worked for multinational company called Saint Gobain . Afterwards he worked for SEI investments ,fortune 500 , which is one of the biggest mutual fund trader in the US.
In 2005, He took a challenge in a steel industry and started to work for Tezcan ( re rolling steel mill with capacity of over 1 million Metric tonnes) to organize and improve export sales towards Europe and Russia. Afterwards he was appointed as a director of steel commodities at LN metals London global commodity trading house that is owned by First Rand bank (Second biggest bank in South Africa). During his time with LN Metals, he established sourcing structure from Far east to supply steel towards, Europe, Turkey, S. America and Russia.
In 2012, Gorkem Bolaca has founded Galex steel international. Galex steel is an international trading house mainly supply flat steel products and exports towards Europe, Turkey, South America, Middle East and Far East. Galex works with reputable government and private mills from China, Vietnam, India and Turkey on regional or project basis ( Galex also holds regional exclusivities of several reputable steel mills in China). Majority of our customers are world wide or nationally known companies and many of them are ranked withing first 500 companies in their nation.
Master of Science (M.Sc.) , Metallurgy, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm Sweden
Positions : President metallurgical companies AB Ferrolegeringar, Minpro AB, AB Ferromax
Inventor of several patents using carbon as a reductant in solid state reductions.
Jason Sutton- CEO (Invica Industries Ltd) Jason has vast experience as a passionate business leader, demonstrating a keen focus on developing high-quality business strategies in complex and diverse international businesses. Jason holds the position of CEO of Invica Industries Ltd. The groups business activities are underpinned by a drive towards a better environment and accelerated level of decarbonisation within hard to abate sectors. The group has interests in businesses spanning sectors such as Filtration and Purification, Smokeless and renewable solid fuels and Refractories.