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BUSINESS

Stockholm suburb claims top spot in business-friendliness ranking

The north Stockholm suburb of Solna has been named the most business-friendly municipality in Sweden according to a new ranking.

Solna, located just north of the Swedish capital city, topped a new ranking published on Tuesday by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv).

“Solna continues to impress with high marks from both its own businesses and for the high values of the statistical factors which compliment the answers to the survey,” Carolina Brånby, a specialist on local business climate with the business group, said in a statement.

Coming in second in the ranking is the municipality of Vellinge in southern Sweden, followed by Trosa, in eastern Sweden, and Sollentuna, another suburb on the north side of Stockholm.

Other Stockholm suburbs in the top ten include Sollentuna, Nacka, Danderyd, and Upplands Väsby, all of which are situated north of the capital.

In general, many of the municipalities considered to be conducive to business can be found in and around Sweden’s large metropolitan areas, while sparsely populated regions in the north of the country are home to only six out of the top 100 ranked municipalities.

The municipality of Hörby in southern Sweden recorded the biggest jump in the Confederation’s rankings this year, moving up 87 spots to 58th place out of Sweden’s 290 municipalities.

Hagfors, located in Värmland County in central Sweden, also jumped 87 spots from last year, when it came in 189th place.

The least business-friendly climate in Sweden can be found in Färgelanda in western Sweden, a municipality which has slid steadily down in the Confederation’s rankings for the past several years.

The ranking is based largely on responses to surveys sent to 33,000 business owners around the country which asks them to rank their home municipality’s business climate.

In addition, figures from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and the UC credit information agency also affect the rankings.

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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden’s SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa. 

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology. 

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces. 

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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