Welcome to K1-MET

Competence in sustainable metal production

K1-MET is one of the leading and internationally renowned metallurgical competence centres for ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy situated in Austria. Cooperation is done with renowned national and international partners from the metallurgical sectors to cover issues such as energy efficiency, circular economy, and climate neutral metal production. Only through cooperative research in all technical areas, resource efficiency and product quality can be increased so that Europe remains competitive in the long-term. The basis for a fruitful development of K1-MET is the established and deepening cooperation between our partners since almost 25 years. K1-MET and its partners are working on process solutions to advance the modernization of the European metallurgical industry.

Additionally, K1-MET clearly commits to the global climate goals and research is done with a focus on long-term expansion of quality and technology leadership to be the answer to European and global challenges. Issues such as the increased establishment of renewable energy systems or decarbonization must remain in the focus to reduce CO₂ emissions and to achieve the climate targets.

Specifically the following actions are planned:

Definition of a joint innovation programme (science and industry) for the further development of process leadership with the main focus on optimized usage of energy and resources
Build-up and further development of co-operations with other sectors and branches (integration of new partners)
Internationalisation (researcher's mobility, participation in European projects, integration in international networks such as Processes4Planet and ESTEP)
Acquisition, build-up, and development of promising researchers

The projects defined in the areas are geared toward the following key objectives:

Increase process efficiency and strengthen circularity in metallurgy
Push forward the decarbonisation of the metallurgical industry and sector coupling
Generate and use of metallurgical process knowledge through digital technologies

The research program has been defined for a four-year period, from July 2023 to June 2027. Project definitions have been created for the research areas and new projects are continuously under development. Another important objective of the research program is to network innovation and explorations internationally and to make it visible.