Thursday 01.02.2024
On February 1, 2024, a session of the City Student Parliament of Smederevo's primary and secondary
schools was held at the Primary School Dr. Jovan Cvijić, where, as part of the "Development of Young
People's Ecological Culture" project, what HBIS Serbia Steel Mill is doing in the field of environmental
protection was presented. Ljubica Drejk, the company's general manager of Environmental, presented
what has been done so far, the results, goals, and future projects for improving environmental impact and
energy efficiency. In an interactive conversation, members of the City Parliament learned mostly about
the impact of the steel mill on air, as one of the three main media in this area, besides water and soil. It
was stated that the steel mill has 40 emitters with filters from different periods of operation, and the new
facilities like the New Sinter Plant are equipped with the best available technologies.
"We constantly strive to reduce the environmental impact to a minimum and, as we do, to comply with
the legally prescribed limits that are becoming stricter, and we take measures and investments to
continuously improve that impact. The filters we aim for are with dry de-dusting, like we have at the New
Sinter Plant, where we actually have a triple de-dusting system. Thanks to this, we emit less than 2
miligrams per cubic meter of dust, while the limits for our heavy industry are 50 mg per cubic meter, so
the results are far better than the EU standards. We also have alarms on continuous monitors that warn
us if emissions may approach the upper permissible limits in some situations, and they serve to halt
production in those cases," said Ljubica Drejk and mentioned that the factory's impact on the environment
is certainly not the only one, especially during the heating period.
She then emphasized how important it is for the company to follow the results of our facilities' operations.
For this reason, the company bought and donated an automatic measuring station to the Environmental
Protection Agency, which is located in Radinac. "We did this, even though it was not our legal obligation.
When we built and started the operation of the New Sinter Plant, the measuring station in Radinac
immediately showed improvement," Drejk said, emphasizing that environmental protection is the task of
every individual, both employees and those living in the city.
"We constantly invest efforts, which has led to the result that in 2023, for the first time in the history of
the factory, the average annual concentration of PM10 particles was less than 40 micrograms per cubic
meter – it was 36.85 micrograms per cubic meter," Drejk highlighted.
Members of the City Student Parliament showed great interest and had numerous questions on this topic,
and many answers were provided during the presentation. They were visibly surprised that, contrary to
the stories circulated in public, the steel mill invests significant efforts daily in improving its operations
and in applying new technologies, which also contributes to the improvement of the environment.