What says Industry better than Steel Mills? In Minecraft and also IC2 the process of smelting is wanting something. Simply heating up the ore in a furnace will have no effect, since it is not simply specs of pure metal in rock, waiting to be melted out. IRL, an ore is usually an oxide: Iron Oxide, Copper Oxide, Aluminium Oxide etc. To obtain pure metals the oxygen must be removed, and this is done by displacing it with Carbon, which comes in the form of Coke (Obtained by baking Coal without oxygen present, can be done in the furnace) or Charcoal. The remove impurities, Limestone (Gravel would be a good thing to use for this) is added to drive them out in the form of slag (which can be conveniently be represented by Scrap)
So:
[Any Ore] + Gravel + [Coke or Charcoal] -> Scrap + [Metal Ingot]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l7JqonyoKA
This should all be done in a new machine, a Blast Furnace, which has a slot for everything mentioned above. Because the Coke burns away in the process and keeps the furnace hot, no EU/t is required.
The process for refining the Iron into Ref. Iron is close enough.
Bam, only one new machine, one new item.