74
Contract and permanent hires made
Overview
- Project: Stegra
- Sector: Manufacturing: Green Hydrogen, Green Iron and Green Steel
- Location(s): Sweden
Services Provided
- Contract Hire Recruitment
- Permanent Hire Recruitment
- Market Intelligence
- Global Employment & Mobility
Background
Stegra, formerly H2 Green Steel, is pioneering the future of sustainable steel production with Europe's largest green hydrogen-powered electrolyzer. By replacing coal with green hydrogen, they refine iron ore into near-zero emission steel, emitting only steam, just plain water.
Their flagship Boden Plant is the first new steel mill in Europe in 50 years, integrating green hydrogen, green iron, and green steel production under one roof. Once fully operational, it will cut steel industry emissions by over 7 million tonnes annually, setting a new standard for decarbonizing heavy industry.
Challenge
Stegra is on a mission to scale up and produce 5 million tonnes of green steel annually by 2030, driving sustainable change for generations. However, as a rapidly expanding company, they face significant challenges in scaling their operations. Their new facility in northern Sweden is geographically remote, making logistics and talent acquisition difficult. In addition, Sweden’s talent shortage limits access to the skilled workforce needed for such an ambitious project.
To support their growth, Stegra needed not just a supplier but a strategic partner to build an international workforce at speed, while navigating immigration, compliance, and remote operations for their ground-breaking green steel production.
Airswift Solution
To support rapid expansion and maintain momentum, a global talent strategy was implemented to overcome local skill shortages and meet critical deadlines. A diverse mix of professionals from multiple countries in contract and permanent positions were sourced, ensuring each hire met the technical and cultural requirements of the role. This proactive approach enabled Stegra to fill resource gaps quickly and continue progress without disruption.Actionable talent insights and market intelligence were provided to enable smarter hiring, competitive offers, and strategic workforce planning:
- Talent Availability: Empowered workforce planning by revealing where critical skills are most accessible.
- Competitive Salary Benchmarks: Ensured attraction of top talent through market-aligned pay insights to support informed offers and retain talent without overspending.
- Compensation & Benefits Trends: Informed future reward strategies to align with expectations and stay competitive.
- Industry-Specific Insights: Supported smarter workforce decisions with tailored guidance aligned to the sector.
- Visas: Secured all necessary documentation swiftly, enabling timely onboarding of international hires.
- Tax Regulation: Ensured full tax compliance from day one, reducing risk of penalties or administrative delays.
- Local Compliance: Navigated complex Swedish labor laws, managed all government interactions, streamlining processes and removing administrative burdens.
By gaining real-time visibility into global talent trends, Stegra made data informed, competitive offers, ensuring access to top tier candidates without exceeding budget constraints.
Airswift continue to serve as the main supplier for the project, trusted not just to deliver talent, but also to shape and guide their long-term talent strategy.
Results
With access to real-time market intelligence, Stegra gained full visibility into talent trends, enabling competitive, data-driven hiring decisions. This allowed them to attract top-tier candidates while maintaining cost control, which is critical in a tight labour market. As a result, Stegra was able to fill high-demand roles quickly and confidently, keeping their ambitious construction schedule on track without overextending resources.
Following the success of the initial phase, Stegra expanded the partnership, entrusting Airswift to provide specialist, high-touch support for key individuals whose expertise was critical to the project's success. This bespoke support helped secure and retain mission-critical talent.
With 67 team members deployed, including 35 on the ground in Sweden and 32 working remotely across 15 countries, Stegra continues to scale one of Europe’s most dynamic infrastructure projects efficiently. Stegra relies on Airswift as a strategic partner, driving workforce decisions, enabling sustainable growth, and powering its evolving talent strategy.
Testimonials
I have always found Airswift to be very responsive, helpful and knowledgeable. We have used Airswift specifically to facilitate talent needs in countries where we have not had an entity or where we have had a need for specific workforce assistance that Airswift can provide.
Airswift is one of the most reliable contingent labor providers that we work with. Their team has consistently provided highly skilled clean energy talent to job sites in every imaginable location. The Airswift staff has consistently responded to our requests, and the level of professional services has set the standard by which we now measure other renewable energy recruitment companies.
We knew that we could rely on Airswift and that they do their best to get the job done. Great knowledge about the alternative energy market and details of the positions that we were going to hire. Airswift are not pushy and aggressive like other agencies. They provide good and professional service at fair and reasonable prices while accommodating customer’s needs and expectations.
The Airswift team has been instrumental in key steps of several of our green energy projects. The whole team offers both quantitative and qualitative support with high sense of service, even with tight deadlines.
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