Metal Logic has created a new process that could upend how the industry thinks about the transformation of iron to steel.
The global iron and steel sector has undergone profound transformation over recent decades.
Operators of ageing blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace facilities, once the backbone of steelmaking, are grappling with an industry that bears little resemblance to the one in which their plants were built.
These facilities thrived on coal-fired power and abundant capital. Today, however, they face a different set of environmental, social and governance (ESG) expectations.
Emissions intensity, energy use and supply-chain transparency have all affected the viability of these smelters, leaving operators to adapt.
The industrial logic that once made large integrated steelworks so dominant no longer stacks up.
In response, the sector has started exploring new pathways in search of high-efficiency, low-emissions operating models, with ‘green’ iron and steel alternatives held up as the way forward.
But what if the disruption story for steelmaking is more radical than green hydrogen alone?
New wave of steel logic
Australian-based steel technology company Metal Logic believes it is close to delivering a fundamental shift in how iron can be turned into steel.
Its approach is not based on incremental refinements of old technologies. Rather, Metal Logic describes its solution as a wholesale reconceptualisation of how steel can be made, transported and sold.
At first glance, the company’s model resembles the type of platform marketplace that has reshaped countless industries. Its ambition is clear: to connect a broad spectrum of steel buyers with a diverse set of suppliers.
Metal Logic chief executive officer Joel Nicholls acknowledges that the business model follows the template of platform success stories like Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.
“It helps some people understand it a bit more when we say this is effectively the Amazon of iron; it gives people something that’s analogous to what we’re doing,” Nicholls told Mining.
“We’re bringing together upstream iron and downstream end users of steel, and when we say upstream, that’s not just existing producers of steel – that’s stranded assets as well.”
Nicholls is quick to point out, however, that Metal Logic is more than a business model. At the heart of the marketplace is a radically new approach to smelting.
The company calls its technology ‘scalable array smelters’, a modular, almost Lego-like method of iron smelting.
“We can do the same amount of productive work in a commercial-refrigerator-sized box that used to take a tennis-court-sized furnace. That’s really what the ability to modularise this process is about,” Nicholls said.
Instead of shipping ore to far-off integrated steelworks, Metal Logic’s solution enables ore producers, including mining operations, to complete part of the smelting on-site using compact, modular smelter units designed and engineered in Australia.
Nicholls said the units are small enough to be positioned close to mining operations, even directly in pits, and integrated into flowsheets alongside standard processing infrastructure.
Individual modules can be stacked in arrays to meet demand, allowing production to scale to potentially one million tonnes per annum without the multi-billion-dollar capital burden associated with traditional steelmaking infrastructure, according to Nicholls.
Metal Logic is looking at producing crude steel from its modular units rather than setting itself up as a full-service integrated steel mill.
“The first stage of what we do is create an ingot that can be fed into a rebar facility,” Nicholls said. “That’s the path of least resistance for taking this product to market, and then we have plans to take it a step further.
“In 2026, we will introduce the first additional module. That additional module looks at a continuous casting line. You can move to a sheet plate and coil, so it’s moving through the incremental steps to get there.
“We will stay away from structural steel for the time being, just because there’s certification and validation required in that process.”
Developing the intellectual property behind the technology and design iteration of the modular smelters has taken several years, but Nicholls said the company is now ready to accelerate.
“Flowsheet development, physics, supply-chain design, it’s certainly not an overnight story,” Nicholls said. “But the goal has always been the same: to create a system that is modular, economic and capable of processing almost any grade of iron ore.”
Nicholls is understandably discreet about the details of the intellectual property that makes this possible, but the guiding principle is “thermodynamic efficiency”. He said the process is fundamentally new and delivers significant thermodynamic gains, using less energy per unit of steel produced, reducing operating costs and lowering emissions.
“So, a blast furnace–basic oxygen furnace is about 13,500 megajoules per tonne of crude steel. We’re sitting just above 8000 at the moment,” he said.
“We run something called a theoretical physics model in parallel. We’ve identified a number of theoretical improvements that we expect to achieve over time, because we’re producing using a modular approach.
“Those improvements will be implemented as we improve our production processes. That currently sits at about 4500 megajoules per tonne. So, theoretically, we could get that low.”
Crucially, Nicholls said Metal Logic’s smelter technology can handle far lower-grade iron ore than existing reduction technologies. While conventional direct reduced iron DRI relies on high-grade feedstock of 65–66 per cent iron (Fe), Metal Logic’s system can process ore down to 50 per cent Fe.
“With the majority of ores that we feed into this process, we’ll be able to get to effectively zero emission, or something that’s de minimis, which is ultimately why we’re going down the path to calling it clean steel,” Nicholls said.
“So not only is it a next to zero-emission end product, but it’s also a lower cost product. That ability is game-changing. We can unlock value that would otherwise stay in the ground.
“There’s a lot of talk about ‘Pilbara killers’ and stranded ore bodies; our process actually changes that conversation.”
Pilbara proving ground
To demonstrate its technology, Metal Logic has secured a parcel of land in the Pilbara, complete with a mining lease. The location provides a practical testbed in the world’s biggest iron ore corridor, close to rail lines and logistics networks needed for scale.
By bringing smelting to the ore, rather than transporting ore to smelters, Metal Logic aims to eliminate significant logistics costs, reduce waste movement and minimise emissions from transport. This means producers can monetise lower-grade deposits, reduce stockpiles of uneconomic ore and access a broader market through the digital platform.
As the steel sector searches for viable pathways to lower emissions and greater efficiency, Metal Logic is positioning itself as an alternative to legacy blast furnaces and capital-heavy green hydrogen plays. Its pitch is that true transformation will not come from replicating existing high-cost processes with cleaner inputs, but from designing a fundamentally different system.
“Our goal is simple: provide buyers with a lower-cost product, not a more expensive one,” Nicholls said. “This is not decarbonisation at any cost. This is decarbonisation that reduces cost.”
