Czech Republic-headquartered Sev.en Global Investments has agreed to supply Ostrava steelworks Nova Hut with square billet from its 7 Steel Nordic plant in Norway, Kallanish notes.
The Ostrava mill plans to install an electric arc furnace with a capacity of up to 1.5 million tonnes/year of crude steel, after its blast furnaces were decommissioned when the firm became insolvent under former owner Liberty Steel. It has since been running as a re-rolling operation on a tolling basis, sourcing feedstock from Vítkovice Machinery Trade (VMT) and Donquixote.
Nova Hut, owned by former Czech interior minister Martin Pecina through his Iromet SICAV investment fund, took over the Ostrava plant last October.
Sev.en Global Investments, owned by Czech businessman Pavel Tykač, acquired Celsa’s Norway- and UK-based steelworks last year. The former operation, a renewable hydropower-based EAF and rolling mill in Mo i Rana, made its first steel shipment to the Czech Republic earlier this year.
Nova Hut requires several hundred thousand tonnes/year of semi-finished steel feedstock for its rolling mills, which 7 Steel is capable of providing, Sev.en Global Investments head of steel business Libor Cerny tells Kallanish. This cooperation could continue until the Ostrava plant commissions its EAF.
The billet will be shipped from 7 Steel’s port in Mo i Rana across the Baltic Sea to a port in Poland and then transported by rail to the steelworks in Ostrava.
“This is the start of cooperation between Nova Hut and the Sev.en Group in the field of green steel supplies. We are pleased that this cooperation has been successfully launched and that the Sev.en Group is thus supporting the recovery of Nova Hut,” says a Nova Hut spokesperson. “The contracted volume is in the range of several thousand tonnes of steel. Both sides expect long-term cooperation.”
Cerny adds: “We are also considering the possibility of supplying billets to Nova Hut from 7 Steel UK in Cardiff, Wales. However, this remains only a potential option at this stage and no specific agreement has been reached.”
He declined to comment on how pricing is calculated in the supply agreement, emphasising it is “commercially attractive and creates long-term value for both parties”.
Prices will depend on market conditions, “mostly the price of scrap”, the Nova Hut spokesperson concludes.
