Deref: 2 Plants 7 Years After Its EIC Accelerator Refractory Grant

Every steel mill lines its furnaces, ladles and converters with refractory bricks and masses that withstand molten metal, and every few weeks or months those linings are worn out and torn down. Most of the debris, "about 80-90% of total ladles and furnaces demolition material", ends up in landfill, according to the CORDIS fact sheet of ReStoRe, a project by the Genoa company Deref S.p.A. Deref, whose name stands for "DEmolizione REFrattari" (refractory demolition), sorts and processes that waste on site so the steelworks can use it again in place of lime, dolomitic lime, bauxite and scrap.

The European Commission selected ReStoRe at the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the grant-only programme of the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot that became the EIC Accelerator. The Commission's list of selected companies names Deref s.p.a. of Genova as the only company on the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,851,210.25 towards a total cost of €4,073,157.50.

A Family Industrial Supplier, Still Trading Profitably

Deref is not a start-up. It was entered in the Genoa company register on 1 September 1985, according to data from the Registro Imprese published by aziende.it, and its own website says it "was established in 1954 by Virgilio Fasolini" and has been in the refractory market "for three generations". The 1954 date belongs to the wider family group: Stara Glass, a glass furnace builder at the same Genoa address, says it was "founded as S.T.A.R.A. in 1954 by Virgilio Fasolini". Deref describes Stara Glass and "the other companies of the Hydra Group" as partners in its glass furnace demolition work. Who owns Deref's shares is not shown on free register sources.

The company is active. It filed accounts for 2025, which show revenue of €22.8 million and a net profit of €1.9 million, according to ReportAziende and Atoka. In 2024 revenue was €24,457,130 and profit €1,982,943, aziende.it reports. Its news page runs to November 2025 and records investments in a new packaging line and a 40,000 m³/h air filter in early 2025. ReStoRe is one business among several: Deref also sells metallurgical additives, ladle and tundish powders, mould powders and industrial minerals, and demolishes glass, cement and lime furnaces.

Staff numbers differ between sources: aziende.it gives 84 employees with the 2024 accounts, Atoka gives 96 for the latest year. No figures from before the award are freely available, so how far the company has grown since 2019 cannot be measured.

The Technology: Spent Linings Back Into the Furnace

When a steel ladle or furnace is relined, the old bricks and masses are a mix of magnesia, dolomite, alumina, carbon and trapped metal. Deref's process, described in its European patent EP 3471898, sieves the material into fractions, separates metal and sorts the mineral fractions by type, then grinds or agglomerates them into products. Those products go back into the same steel shop as slag formers, desulphurising and deoxidising agents, or as secondary raw material for new refractories. The patent, filed in Italy on 20 June 2016 by inventors Giorgio Fasolini and Marc Faverjon, was granted by the European Patent Office on 7 August 2024.

The claimed difference is location and scale. CORDIS says no existing technology recycled more than about 50% of spent refractory in situ with most of the output reused in the same production cycle. Deref says its first industrial plant, at a stainless steel electric arc furnace plant, reached a 95% recycling rate with 80% reuse in the same plant. That plant is at Acciai Speciali Terni, according to an interview with Deref engineer Marc Faverjon in GreenMe in June 2024, and Deref announced in September 2024 that the Terni contract had been renewed "after 10 years of activity". ReStoRe was therefore a working process before the EIC grant; the grant paid to adapt it to other kinds of steelworks.

What ReStoRe Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project ran for 36 months, from 1 March 2019 to 28 February 2022. The grant agreement was signed on 23 July 2019, nearly five months after the start date. It promised four things: adapt the process to every steel production route, validate it in large-scale trials and demonstrations "with at least 7 big steel producers", standardise protocols and plant designs, and obtain an EU Environmental Technology Verification (ETV). The final periodic report and the results page on CORDIS cover each of them.

Deref developed recovery routes for materials that had none, including torpedo car and converter linings, tundish waste, blast furnace runners and spinel bricks, and added briquetting for dusty material. It built a ReStoRe plant for an integrated steelworks in May 2019; the report does not name the site. The process was applied on and off site to the three main plant types. The trials deliverable describes trials at 3 steel plants and "demonstrations or technical-economic assessments" at 4 producers inside and outside the EU, which makes seven producers, but not seven full trials. The report does not name any of them.

The recycling figures fall short of the 95% headline in two of three cases. The report gives 92% for stainless steel from electric arc furnaces, 74% for carbon steel from blast furnaces, and, for carbon steel from electric arc furnaces, 95% of the treated material, which was 80% of the steel shop's spent refractory. The CORDIS objective itself gives 95% for the original stainless plant, while the final report says "over 90%" for the same plant. Every route still beat the 50% CORDIS gives as the previous best.

1. Adapt the process to all steel routesDeliveredApplied to blast furnace, carbon steel and stainless steel electric arc furnace routes, per the final report.
2. Trials with at least 7 big steel producersPartlyTrials at 3 plants plus demonstrations or assessments at 4 producers; none named.
3. 95% recycling ratePartly92%, 74% and 95% of treated material, depending on the route.
4. Standard protocols and plant designsDeliveredSizing software, layouts for 5 case studies and 10 engineered mechanical modules.
5. ETV verificationDeliveredStatement VN20210048 by RINA Services, 25 October 2021, per Deref and CORDIS.
6. Market roll-out across EU steel millsLimitedTwo ReStoRe plants listed by Deref; CORDIS counted over 24 suitable EU mills.

The verification is the most independent piece of evidence. The European Commission's environment newsroom featured ReStoRe in April 2022 as "a new ETV verified solution to recycle waste for reuse within steel-making plants". CORDIS also lists patents granted in India, Iran, Russia and South Africa during the project, a trademark registered in the EU, Russia, Iran and the UK, an article in Refractories Worldforum and one in Il Sole 24 Ore. CORDIS lists the project as closed after 36 months, with its final report published.

What Has Happened Since the Award

The commercial record since 2022 comes almost entirely from Deref's own announcements. In March 2025 it said ArcelorMittal had extended its recycling contract "for the Fos Sur Mer plant for a second term". Its company page lists two ReStoRe plants, Terni and Fos-sur-Mer in France. No independent report of the Fos-sur-Mer contract, its start date or its volumes could be found. In February 2024 Deref said Acciaierie Venete had given it refractory maintenance, logistics and industrial cleaning work at its Padua plant from 1 January 2024, a service contract rather than a ReStoRe plant.

Deref holds ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 certificates, says it obtained a verified method for product carbon footprints under ISO 14067 in March 2024, and published its first sustainability report in November 2023, according to its certifications page. ReStoRe is Deref's only project on CORDIS; a search of the database by company name returns no other EU project. The company has announced no outside funding round, and no tonnages, revenue or CO2 figures for ReStoRe on their own are public.

Why Europe Should Care

Steel is under pressure in Europe, and the Commission's Action Plan for Steel and Metals of March 2025 lists "circularity and decarbonisation investments" among its aims. Most of that debate is about scrap steel. Refractories are a smaller but similar stream: what ReStoRe recovers replaces lime and dolomitic lime, whose production releases CO2 in calcination, and bauxite and alumina, which are on the EU's list of 34 critical raw materials under the Critical Raw Materials Act adopted in 2024. Keeping that material inside the steelworks cuts landfill and imports at the same time.

The Verdict

Deref has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.