Tata Steel's 4.5 million euro investment in heat-retention boxes at its IJmuiden plant in the Netherlands is expected drag costs considerably down by save an estimated of 10 million cubic metres of gas per year. Ten million cubic metres of gas is sufficient to power as many as 5,500 homes.

The newly installed heat-retention boxes will slash the amount of heat that slabs lose between the casting stage and rolling stage of the process of production.

Newly cast steel slabs will be stored in heat-retention boxes, which will keep them hot until they are needed for rolling on facility's Hot Strip Mill.

All that will require the plant to spend less time and energy to reheat the slab before rolling. It will also save precious time for the company. Apart from that, it will bring an additional benefit by cutting CO2 emissions from power generation by nearly 22,000 tonnes per year.

As per the company's statement, the 4.5 million euro investment will pay for itself in bit more than a year.

Tata Steel has been taking numerous steps to restructure its operations across Europe to reduce costs. The company has been able to slash fixed costs by $2.2 billion from the fiscal year of 2008 level of $6.7 billion by restructuring several of its operations, which included shutting of inefficient capacities and divestment of non-core assets.