The review underpins the Company’s commitment to transparent reporting. It has been produced in-line with the International Integrated Reporting Council’s framework and demonstrates the Company’s approach to ensuring it brings long-term, sustainable value to its broad stakeholder base. It outlines the Company’s progress against its four strategic priorities, namely: improving its safety performance; achieving its financial targets; delivering on its Action 2020 strategic plan; and integrating sustainability into the business.

The review, which can be accessed online at http://annualreview2018.arcelormittal.com includes videos of several members of ArcelorMittal’s senior management team, including: Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and CEO; Aditya Mittal, President and CFO, ArcelorMittal and CEO, ArcelorMittal Europe; Brian Aranha, executive vice president; and David Clarke, vice president. Topics covered include:

• ArcelorMittal’s health and safety performance in 2018: progress made against its stated ambition of zero injuries and fatalities and the approach being undertaken to drive further improvement and instill a safety-first culture throughout the organisation;
• ArcelorMittal’s financial and operational performance in 2018: progress made in the third year of the Company’s five-year strategic plan, Action 2020; how the Company further strengthened its balance sheet; and how it is strengthening its operating platform through selectively investing in high-return opportunities;
• The steps the Company is taking to integrate sustainable development into its business, with a focus on: improving safety performance; addressing the carbon challenge; building a high-performing organisation; innovating to support customers and society; providing customer reassurance through global standards and certification; and anticipating and responding to social and environmental trends.

Commenting, Lakshmi Mittal said:

“As the world’s leading steel and mining company, our world-class steel solutions have an important role to play in society. Our goal is to ensure that steel remains the world’s material of choice, and ArcelorMittal the world’s preferred steel supplier. We aim to do this in a manner that is as efficient and effective as possible so we can return value to our broad stakeholder base.

“Against a backdrop of positive market conditions, ArcelorMittal delivered its best financial performance for several years, generating Ebitda of $10.3 billion and net income of $5.1 billion. We also now have industry-leading balance sheet strength and are investing in opportunities to create value so that we build an even stronger, more resilient group. Two good examples of this last year were our acquisitions of Ilva in Italy and Votorantim in Brazil. We also progressed our five-year strategic plan, Action 2020, and have now delivered $1.6 billion from our $3 billion Ebitda target. We therefore have a lot to be pleased about with our performance in 2018.

“Our focus, however, is to ensure that ArcelorMittal is not just successful today, but that our success endures into the future. To do this we must ensure that sustainable development is embedded throughout our business. Addressing climate change and supporting the transition to a low-carbon, circular economy is an important part of this. We are developing a low-emissions technology strategy but need to see public policy evolve to support our efforts.

“Elsewhere, the launch of Steligence^® last year is a good example of how we are innovating to meet customers environmental and sustainability goals. It provides our construction sector customers with sustainable building solutions now, while promoting the reuse of steel components at the end of a building’s life. And last year, we also continued to advance our efforts to develop an industry-wide supply-chain assurance scheme, ResponsibleSteel™, which will provide customers with the reassurance they need.

“To conclude, 2018 was a positive year for ArcelorMittal. Our strategic priorities are well established and our focus for the year ahead and beyond is clear. ArcelorMittal is a more resilient, more focused, more capable business than it ever has been.”

Key highlights of ArcelorMittal’s sustainable development approach and progress discussed in the review include:

• Further progress in safety performance, with a record low lost-time injury frequency rate of 0.69x;
• The steps the Company is taking to address the carbon challenge, how it is developing a broad range of technologies to enable it to transition to low-emissions steelmaking and support the objectives of the 2015 Paris agreement. The Company is developing a corporate action plan for carbon reduction which will support a new group-wide 2030 target, to be announced next year. It also plans to publish a detailed Climate Action report in the coming weeks.
• Case studies on:
• A mapping of the UN sustainable development goals against those the Company addresses through its approach to integrating sustainable development into the business;
• A summary of value creation for stakeholders in 2018, in the Company’s value creation model. Examples include
• $4.8 billion total tax contribution;
• $652 million allocated to environmental and energy capital projects;
• A 7% reduction in dust emissions per tonne of steel over three years and a corresponding reduction in NOx of 6%;
• 70 new patents filed and 26 new products launched aimed at creating sustainable development value with a further 38 R&D projects for sustainable development in the pipeline;
• 10 million tonnes of CO2 avoided due to the re-use of blast furnace slag in the cement industry;
• Inclusion in the Bloomberg gender diversity index.