German railway strikes have limited steel impact
The major wave of strikes organised by German train drivers union GDL will impair transports to and from steel mills, although the extent appears to be limited.
Strikes occurred in the last months of 2023 as part of GDL’s wage negotiations with national railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB), which also involves its freight unit DB Cargo. In a note sent by DB Cargo to Kallanish, the company states that “the strikes are primarily directed at industries”. The strikes were resumed for three days from Tuesday at 6pm local time, starting with freight trains, followed by passenger traffic.
According to steel federation WV Stahl, Germany’s mills handle 50% of their transports via rail, “making any strike in freight railways painful for the mills’ logistics”, it says. The volume handled by rail, 62 million tonnes/year, is too large to divert to road transport, WV states. “If [mills’] inventories of raw materials are used up, restrictions on production cannot be avoided,” the federation says.
Thyssenkrupp Steel says it expects limited impairment and notes its main route for raw materials shipments is anyway the Rhine/Ruhr waterway.
ArcelorMittal, too, has played down the situation, stating that the strike would not have an immediate or acute impact on its sites, and that cancelled trainloads will be compensated by other transport, or longer storage. In the east, however, ArcelorMittal Eisenhüttenstadt could be hurt more, as it depends more on rail than on the River Oder. The company told a local newspaper that no transports would leave the works after 6pm on Tuesday.
The railway strike coincides with a strike by German farmers against the government’s abolition of fuel subsidies. To make their point, farmers blocked roads and motorway access with their tractors over recent days, leaving road freight as an unreliable alternative to railway transport.
Christian Koehl Germany
Acciaierie d’Italia output below 3mt, government seeks new partners
Acciaierie d’Italia (ADI), the joint venture between state company Invitalia and ArcelorMittal, registered steel output below 3 million tonnes in 2023, according to preliminary data.
This is below the shareholders’ initial objective of 4mt in 2023 and 5mt in 2024. “None of the commitments made have been kept regarding employment levels and industrial relaunch. In recent years, production has progressively reduced, in defiance of the agreements signed,” Italy’s Minister of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMT), Adolfo Urso, said in a televised speech from the Senate in Rome followed by Kallanish.
“We intend to reverse the trend by outlining a new steel plan … based on a progressive process of renewal, modernisation and specialisation of the existing equipment,” he stated.
He added that thanks to the recent meeting with the private partner this week, the shareholders have partially redefined the previous agreements, creating the conditions for better governance and “the possible entry of another industrial player even in partnership, something previously expressly excluded”.
“ArcelorMittal declared itself willing to accept to reduce its stake to a minority but refuses to contribute financially according to its share, putting the entire financial burden on the State. At the same time, it intends to keep the privilege granted in the original pacts between the shareholders when the Acciaierie d’Italia company was created to share the governance to influence any further decision, which is neither acceptable nor feasible,” Urso continued. “We have therefore mandated Invitalia and its legal team to explore every possible consequent solution.”
ArcelorMittal declined to comment on Thursday.
Natalia Capra France