Day: 2 March 2016

Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Materials Services has acquired Hungarian steel service center IAI Holding A/S from Danish service center group Ib Andresen Industri, ThyssenKrupp (TK) said in a press release Tuesday.

The deal, concluded on February 29, is aimed at strengthening TK’s activities in Eastern Europe.

The service center will now work closely with the German steelmaker on future steel supplies.

“We are confident that the Hungarian automotive supply sector offers major growth potential and that our good distribution network will enable us to expand our activities,” said Marcus Wöhl, ceo of TK Materials Processing Europe.

The newly-bought plant, renamed ThyssenKrupp Materials Processing Hungary, is located in the city of Györ close to the border with Slovakia and Austria and in the proximity of numerous automotive plants in central Europe including Audi, Suzuki, Opel, Fiat, Skoda and the planned Jaguar Land Rover plant in Slovakia.

The service center, employing 50 people, specialises in steel coil, cut-to-length and slitting services. In addition to steel it processes aluminium and stainless steel for automotive use.

The plant has two coil slitting lines. It cuts material 0.3-5mm thick and maximum 1,850mm wide with a maximum coil weight of 32 metric tons. Its cut-to-length line can process coils of 0.5-5mm.

The production capacity is 300,000 mt/year and the plant’s warehouse can store up to 2,100 coils.

Wojtek Laskowski, PLATTS

Italian distributors of flat products expect demand in 2016 to grow further, following the good performance for the sector in terms of volumes in 2015, according to a note by Tommaso Sandrini, head of Assofermet Acciai, the association for finished steel distributors.

In the note the association said that last year’s positive results were driven by the strong growth in demand from the automotive sector (+20%) as well as a recovery in the construction sector.

This year the positive trend is expected to continue, particularly in the second half, surpassing demand levels seen last year. Overall the current order book of Italian flat product distributors is already much healthier than in the past, the association added, which should therefore help service centers to plan ahead and ensure that prices do not fall further.

“All distributors in 2015 benefitted from the increase in consumption in all main end-using sectors, helped at the same time by the sharp loss of market share in the distribution sector by Ilva,” the note said.

Prospects for the Italian supply chain of flat products – with the uncertainty at Ilva continuing and the limitation on imports from countries such as China and Russia – could very well benefit the distribution sector, as buyers will seek the added value of those services provided by both stockholders and distributors, Assofermet noted.

Emanuele Norsa, PLATTS