As 2025 comes to a close, the refractory industry stands at a pivotal moment — shaped by rapid technological advancement, shifting global supply dynamics, and a renewed emphasis on sustainability, workforce evolution, and customer partnership.
Across steelmaking, cement, non-ferrous metals, and beyond, our customers are navigating an increasingly complex operating landscape. Yet this year has also revealed extraordinary opportunities to accelerate innovation, rethink collaboration, and strengthen the role of refractories in a more digital and sustainable industrial world.
In this special year-end edition, we sit down with RHI Magnesita CEO Stefan Borgas to reflect on the defining themes of 2025, the milestones that shaped our journey, and the strategic direction guiding our path forward. From market challenges to breakthrough advancements.
Below, Stefan shares his insights on the year behind us and what lies ahead for our customers, our teams, and the refractory sector.
The words that capture this year best are “surprise” & “resilience“. Global conditions remained unstable, changed and surprised us continuously, sometimes even during the month. This was influenced by geopolitical tension, trade frictions and shifting supply chains – many of our key customer industries also felt the effects. Despite the unpredictable global landscape, our customers, partners, and investors trusted us to remain a stable force in their value chains. Their confidence enabled us to push forward with resilience. At the same time, our teams kept their focus on the essentials: delivering quality, maintaining customer trust and pushing ahead with the long-term transformation we committed to. That consistency and clarity made a significant impact.
We navigated the environment – with a lot of difficulties and a very subdued performance until July this year. But then the actions that everyone had initiated started to grip, our performance improved and we have started delivering a much better performance since August. This “turn around” comes solely from strengthening our operational foundation: cost reductions, careful price increases, unfortunately some plant closures, but also more operational stability and consistency. What increasingly sets us apart now is our local-for-local strategy: local plants embedded in a global network – this gives us flexibility when it matters.
Despite all volatility, we are executing our clearly defined strategy (and actually checking it permanently to ensure it still makes sense) – these are:
Sustainability has become deeply embedded in how we operate and invest. In 2025, we continued to increase our recycling initiatives, in terms of actual usage and also in terms of technology improvement. Our renewable-energy capacity expanded, and we commissioned a 2.2 MW photovoltaic installation in China, saving around 2,000 tons of CO₂ annually; more such projects are under way in all regions. We have also advanced on our green minerals initiative, which will open a new business area for RHIM while absorbing 50,000t/year of CO₂ of our existing processes at the same time with just the first project. This is a significant transformation since 2019.
During 2025 we shifted our mindset: colleagues began using AI, leveraging automation and digital tools to genuinely improve daily work and decision-making. Our focus on upskilling and data literacy supports this development and builds confidence. We are still in the exploratory phase of finding the best way to use AI technologies in our many different functions, but by embracing AI across our operations, we will be setting new standards in efficiency and reliability for the refractory industry.
Our culture of open, collaborative and direct, curious spirit helps a lot to enable this exploration. It’s more a bottom-up process right now rather than a corporate top-down approach.
I am especially proud of the dedication and commitment shown by our people that led to the turn-around of our business in the second half of this year. Our customer focus has improved even further! I also value the discipline we maintained in advancing our priorities in the areas of digitalization, sustainability, customer focus, and operational excellence. And finally, I appreciate the open and pragmatic mindset which shaped decisions throughout the year, as we have established a no-blame culture focused on finding solutions together. The spirit of our employees helped me personally to overcome my own moodiness – and for this I want to thank all of RHIM’s professionals personally: you helped me to get through! Thank you.
The ones we know are much the same as in 2025: they are linked to implementing our strategy projects in an environment of subdued market demand. Geopolitical uncertainty will bring new challenges in 2026: let’s not be surprised to be surprised. This means we need to stay flexible, focused and prepared to act. And I learned from our team that keeping a friendly positive spirit and taking care about each other is the best foundation.
In a market that remains challenging; innovation becomes even more important; service and speed for our customer will be the decisive differentiators – RHIM has the largest toolbox in the industry for this. Talent development, especially in technical and digital areas, will remain essential. The simplification of our processes has great potential. The external challenges are an invitation to move further, be faster, and think smarter.