Category: Latest Updates

ArcelorMittal France has declared force majeure and is reducing production at its flat products’ plants in France. “This decision follows the current sharp slowdown in the steel market, as well as the interruption of activity by certain customers and suppliers, despite the continuing strong demand in segments such as packaging steels (cans in particular),” ArcelorMittal says in a note sent to Kallanish.

At Fos-sur-Mer in southern France ArcelorMittal will shut down a blast furnace, converter and continuous casting line. For an initial period of 7 days, the strip mill at Fos and downstream finishing lines at Fos and the Saint-Chély-d’Apcher plant will also be idled. This reduction in activity that started gradually on 19 March will continue until further notice.

In northern France, ArcelorMittal has shut down a blast furnace and converter in Dunkirk from 23 March. “This will reduce the need for coke sooner than expected and the impact on the Florange coking plant will have to be reassessed. The number of cold rolling lines remaining in operation and the number of stations per line will be adjusted. Our workforce will be reduced to the minimum necessary on each plant concerned while ensuring market demand,” the company says.

The European Commission (EC) has confirmed that preliminary duties on hot rolled stainless steel flat products from China, Indonesia and Taiwan should be imposed as of 12 April.

The Commission explains in a note monitored by Kallanish that duties have been proposed in a range between 7.5% and 18.9% depending on the provenance of the material. Taiwanese products will be hit less hard, while Chinese and Indonesian imports will be assigned higher duty rates.

The investigation was launched in August 2019 following a complaint by Eurofer. The products covered are hot rolled stainless steel flat products falling under HS codes 7219 11, 7219 12, 7219 13, 7219 14, 7219 22, 7219 23, 7219 24, 7220 11 and 7220 12. There are some exclusions and these codes are given for information only, the EC says.

Earlier in January this year the European Union had asked regional customs’ operations to register the imports of the products under investigation. In addition to the AD investigation, there is an anti-subsidy investigation on the same products begun in October last year.

Certain Italian steel mills will have to shut down most operations under a government decree issued Sunday, tightening restrictions to fight the spread coronavirus.

The government has ordered the suspension of industrial and commercial activities that are not essential by March 25.

Market sources said that although most mills would not be allowed to continue production, some are trying to secure the requisite permission from local prefects to carry on. Unions have promised to fight such moves and say they are ready to call a huge strike to prevent plants staying open.

Under the government decree, continuous production cycle plants activities are permitted “from which interruption results in serious damage to the plant itself,” but again this is subject to a greenlight from the local prefect.

AM Italia: BFs said operational

ArcelorMittal Italia’s plant in Taranto, the largest Italian flat steel producer, has some continuous cycle production at its plant that should be allowed to keep running.

On Saturday it shut down blast furnace No.2 at Taranto, as well as the facility’s No.1 melting shop. Crude steel production will be around 8,500 mt/day, with only two blast furnaces — No.1 and 4 — continuing to work, unions sources told S&P Global Platts.

“AM Italia has shut down some of the hot end; we do understand that BF1 and BF4 have to continue to be operative, but we ask to shut down all the other cold end part activities that are still working in Taranto as well as in the sites of the company based in North Italy such as the Genoa re-rolling plants and Novi Liguri,” a union source said.

“We urge the government and the prefects to listen to us and stop all the activities — there is no need for the cold end parts to work for the time being, also considering that most of the Italian steel producers’ buyers — domestic and not domestic — have halted productions, in particular the automotive sectors,” he added.

Unions were due to meet with company representatives Monday afternoon.

The company declined to comment.

Arvedi to continue producing

Arvedi will continue to produce steel, according to an official note Monday from the second largest Italian flat products producer.

Arvedi operates electric arc furnaces (EAFs) and scrap, a raw material which has seen a sharp price decrease due to the outbreak. Most of Arvedi’s core production is for the automotive sector, which is currently largely idle.

Arvedi declined to comment when asked on which grounds the prefect had granted it the greenlight to continue working. However, in a brief note to the press the company underlined that “the production activities continue regularly in full compliance with the Decree itself and all the safety measures already put in place by the Group for some weeks to protect all its workers.”

Arvedi’s Servola plant in the Trieste area was due to close permanently at the end of March in any case.

Arvedi is based in one of the areas of Italy which has suffered most fatalities from the coronavirus outbreak.

— Annalisa Villa

As the WTO ramps up monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic’s trade implications, Director-General Roberto Azevêdo calls for transparency with regard to trade-related policies introduced to fight the virus.

In a 24 March message asking all members to submit information to the WTO Secretariat about recent trade and trade-related measures, DG Azevêdo called specific attention to the policies members had introduced in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“The current COVID-19 pandemic represents an almost unprecedented health crisis, and members are understandably responding by introducing legislation and policies to seek to combat this health emergency,” he wrote. “These include measures that are trade-related, such as export measures and economic support programmes.”

The DG asked members to provide the Secretariat with information about their COVID-19 policies with trade implications, emphasising that whatever they submit would be used purely for transparency purposes.

The request was part of a longstanding transparency exercise in which the WTO Secretariat compiles regular reports on trade-facilitating and restricting measures introduced by members of the Group of 20 leading economies as well as by the WTO membership as a whole. The next trade monitoring report will look at measures taken between mid-October 2019 and mid-May 2020.

The monitoring exercise has previously shone a spotlight on trade measures taken in the context of health emergencies, notably the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009-10.

In comments on the COVID-19 outbreak, DG Azevêdo has stressed the importance of transparency with regard to trade-related measures, arguing that it would be particularly useful for the many countries that rely on imports for medical supplies.

More broadly, the Director-General has set up a task force of experts from across the Secretariat to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on trade flows and the overall global economy. Some of the task force’s findings will inform the WTO’s annual trade projections which will be released next month.​

Tata has not idled any blast furnaces across its Port Talbot and IJmuiden sites in the UK and the Netherlands, despite reducing production because of lower demand.

The company appears to be slowing to the lowest technical minimum level possible in the UK, and is mulling a potential furnace stoppage as well as the hot idling of coke ovens.

German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp will also cut production because of the drop in demand caused by the coronavirus crisis, and because its “top priority” is the health of its employees, it told Argus.

Smaller Austrian producer Voestalpine said yesterday that it was idling a blast furnace at its Linz site because of the collapse in demand from its customer base, and was implementing short-time working.

Meanwhile, German steelmaker Salzgitter is cutting strip production as well as crude steel output, it said.

The company had earlier said that it would reduce blast furnace output. No blast furnace will be idled, but output will be scaled back across all units. And it will reduce rolling mill and coating line output “in accordance to the market development and the availability of staff”, the company said today.

Salzgitter will “monitor the situation closely” to see if any furnaces need to be idled, it said. The company’s blast furnace three was closed last year.

By Colin Richardson

Luxembourg-based producer ArcelorMittal is the only firm that is allowed to continue producing steel at its Taranto site in Italy after the government tightened measures on non-essential industrial activity over the weekend in its continuing fight against the spread of the coronavirus.

Taranto produces using a blast furnace, and as such it falls under the clause of the new decree, exempting businesses in a continuous production cycle. If the furnace were to stop, it would result in significant financial damage to the company.

But Arcelor’s other steel-producing assets in Italy, as well as all other mills, service centres and producers, are required to temporarily shut down until 3 April.

According to the decree, appointed regional authorities are to decide if the continuous operation of a business is essential or not, and whether it is ‘strategic’ for it to continue working. Any producer in the aviation or weapons production chain is exempt from the restrictions.

Other steelmakers are understood to be trying to prove to the respective regional authorities that their operations must continue. In addition, purchasing of scrap from abroad is understood to be continuing, likely as a result of an anticipated shortage in the country owing to reduced scrap flows, as the country is under lockdown.

ArcelorMittal and the Italian government agreed at the beginning of March that the government would take a stake in Ilva. The company last week confirmed to Argus that it had decided to slow output across Europe and in Italy, halving the workforce in Taranto to 3,800 workers in a bid to stop the spread of the virus.

By Lora Stoyanova

Italian steelmaker Arvedi’s production sites remain in operation following the government’s introduction of tighter coronavirus-control measures yesterday.

All non-essential industries have been ordered to temporarily stop operations in a bid to contain the spread of the virus in the country, which has the highest death toll from the pandemic.

“Production activities continue in full compliance with the decree and with all the safety measures already put in place by the [Arvedi] Group for several weeks to protect all its workers,” the company said.

Fellow producer ArcelorMittal’s Taranto site is exempt from the new measures as it is blast furnace-based. Other steel producers were today said to be providing evidence to regional authorities that they also need to continue production.

By Lora Stoyanova

The Italian market has come to a complete standstill after the government announced over the weekend that all non-essential industries are to temporarily shut their operations until 3 April.

The Argus Italian index is unchanged at €440/t ex-works, while the northwest European index is also static at €474.50/t.

Market participants were still seeking clarification as to whether their businesses needed to be closed as well, as some producers are heard to be continuing. So far only ArcelorMittal Taranto is understood to have permission to carry on work — albeit as previously announced at reduced rates — while some EAF-based mills are building up cases as to why they should continue production. Workers’ unions are still pushing for the complete shutdown of production across the country, and some have said that they plan to strike on 25 March.

“All the customers are closed and cannot produce so where would they deliver?” a market participant said. “I suppose they must reduce drastically the output, due to the closures of most clients,” another one added. “There is no market anymore,” a third said.

But last week, Italian producers were still getting orders from northern Europe, which is a few days behind Italy in terms of the progression of the virus.

At the same time, CIS hot-rolled coil (HRC) prices are spiralling down, with the Argus daily CIS assessment down by $32.50/t in the past week to reach $430/t fob Black Sea today. The downtrend is likely to extend into Turkish coil pricing. Today some traders were short-selling Turkish and CIS HRC into North Africa, but some buyers in Turkey expect mills to revise prices down further in the coming days.

More European steel mills announced Friday they are ramping down production as a direct consequence of decreased demand and further restrictions on public life in Europe, with ArcelorMittal Bremen idling a blast furnace.

ArcelorMittal Germany gave more detail Friday on its decreased output in Germany and said that it had idled one of its two blast furnaces at the flat steel plant in Bremen. The now idled BF had just been restarted in the beginning of January. The annual capacity of the plant is 3.6 million mt of crude steel. The steelmaker also slowed down production at its coking plant Bottrop and reduced working hours at its Eisenhuettenstadt flat steel operations.

While the Italian long steel producer Riva has been shut and Feralpi ceased production at one of its longs mills in Italy, the German subsidiaries of both companies are still producing.

Riva France was also producing, but a distributor said that deliveries from France were a problem.

Tata Steel Europe said it had made “production adjustments” at some of its European mills in the Netherlands and the UK, highlighting that the decrease at its major mills in IJMuiden, Netherlands, and Port Talbot, UK, have not been significant yet.

“While demand is steady in some sectors, production pauses in the European automotive sector are expected to have a knock-on impact on steel supply,” Tata Steel said.

GFG Alliance, which owns Liberty Steel mills across Europe, continues to adjust its steel and aluminum production to demand on a “plant-by-plant basis.”

Czech heavy plate and sections producer Vitkovice Steel confirmed to Platts the mill is operating at its normal levels with weekly output comprised of 10,000 mt of plate and 3,000 mt of sheet piling. Shipments to customers are taking slightly longer though due to a larger- than-normal accumulation of vehicles at border crossings and shipments to Italy being affected the worst. The Czech mill still receives orders from Italy, the company said.

The port of Antwerp – northern Europe’s import hub – said it would be “100%” operational. “At the moment Port of Antwerp has not seen any decline in the freight volume. However, it is expected that fewer ships will call at the port in the coming days and weeks because of the corona outbreak.”

Fifteen fewer large container carriers from Asia will call, corresponding to 115,000 mt of freight not being carried from and to China,” the port said.

— Laura Varriale, Ekaterina Bouckley, Viral Shah

Der Vorstand berichtet über den Jahres- und Konzernabschluss des Geschäftsjahres 2019 wie folgt: 

Die sehr gute Entwicklung des NORDWEST Konzerns hat sich auch in 2019 fortgesetzt. Mit einem Geschäftsvolumen von 3.327,8 Mio. EUR wird der Wert aus dem Vorjahr noch einmal deutlich um 9,4% übertroffen und auch das Lagergeschäft erzielt mit 173,4 Mio. EUR einen neuen Höchstwert und übertrifft die bisherige Bestmarke aus dem Jahr 2018 um +6,1%. Das operative Ergebnis (EBIT) entwickelt sich analog zum Geschäftsvolumen, sodass das Vorjahr (10,6 Mio. EUR) mit nun mehr 11,5 Mio. EUR übertroffen wird. Darüber hinaus ist auch die Anzahl der angeschlossenen Fachhandelspartner im abgelaufenen Jahr um 39 auf 1.091 angestiegen. Damit ist das 100. Geschäftsjahr eines der erfolgreichsten und eindrucksvollsten Geschäftsjahre in der Firmengeschichte. 

Im Geschäftsjahr 2019 können alle Geschäftsbereiche ihr Geschäftsvolumen im Vergleich zum Vorjahr steigern und dabei die bisherigen Rekordwerte aus dem Vorjahr übertreffen. So erzielt der Kerngeschäftsbereich Bau-Handwerk-Industrie in 2019 ein Geschäftsvolumen von 1.161,1 Mio. EUR und übertrifft damit das Vorjahr um weitere +3,9%. Auch der Geschäftsbereich Stahl setzt sein Wachstum weiter fort. Grundlage für die deutliche Ausweitung des Geschäftsvolumens auf 1.226,3 Mio. EUR und damit einem Anstieg um nahezu +3% gegenüber dem Vorjahr bildet dabei die deutliche Ausweitung der abgesetzten Tonnage. Und auch der Geschäftsbereich TeamFaktor/Services übertrifft mit einem Geschäftsvolumen von 725,5 Mio. EUR (+32,6%) den im Vorjahr erreichten Wert noch einmal deutlich. Sehr positiv ist die Entwicklung im Geschäftsbereich Haustechnik mit einem Anstieg des Geschäftsvolumens um +17,4% auf 214,9 Mio. EUR. Diese Entwicklung basiert auf der strategischen Neuausrichtung des Bereiches und der damit verbundenen Akquirierung neuer Fachhandelspartner. 

Im abgelaufenen Geschäftsjahr 2019 erzielt der NORDWEST Konzern ein operatives Ergebnis vor Zinsen und Steuern (EBIT) von 11,5 Mio. EUR (VJ 10,6 Mio. EUR; +8,1% ggü. VJ) bei einem Ergebnis nach Ertragsteuern von 7,7 Mio. EUR (VJ 6,9 Mio. EUR; +10,9% ggü. VJ). Aus diesem Grund befürwortet die Verwaltung für 2019 eine Erhöhung der Ausschüttung an die Aktionäre und schlägt der Hauptversammlung die Ausschüttung einer Dividende in Höhe von 0,80 EUR je Aktie, nach 0,70 EUR je Aktie im Vorjahr, vor. 

Die Hauptversammlung, welche ursprünglich am 14. Mai 2020 in Dortmund stattfinden sollte, wird aufgrund des Verbots von Großveranstaltungen wegen der Coronapandemie in diesem Jahr verschoben. Der neue Termin wird zeitnah festgelegt und bekannt gegeben. Laut gesetzlicher Vorschrift muss ein Aktionärstreffen spätestens zum Ende des achten Monats des Geschäftsjahres erfolgen. Im Falle von NORDWEST ist das Ende August 2020. 

Der AG- und der Konzernabschluss sind in der am heutigen Tag stattgefundenen Sitzung durch den Aufsichtsrat der Gesellschaft geprüft, und der AG-Abschluss ist gemeinsam mit dem Vorstand festgestellt worden. 

Ausblick 

Nach dem sehr erfolgreichen Geschäftsjahr 2019 ist NORDWEST auch in den ersten beiden Monaten erfolgreich in das Geschäftsjahr 2020 gestartet. Für den weiteren Jahresverlauf stimmen unter anderen die gute Resonanz zum FachWerk-Konzept, die neu gegründete Haustechnik-Genossenschaft Hategro, der erfolgreiche Ausbau des Konzeptes Fachhandelspartner 4.0+ sowie die Erweiterung des Exklusivmarkensortimentes optimistisch. NORDWEST erwartet in 2020 auf Konzernebene beim Geschäftsvolumen eine Entwicklung von +0% bis +10% ggü. VJ. Das operative Ergebnis (EBIT) sehen wir bei rund 12,1 Mio. EUR mit einer Bandbreite von +/ – 0,6 Mio. EUR. 

Losgelöst sind diese Prognosen derzeit von den Entwicklungen rund um die Coronapandemie. Sollte sich die gesellschaftliche oder gesamtwirtschaftliche Situation durch die weitere Ausbreitung des Coronavirus verschlechtern oder dauerhaft angespannt bleiben, hätte dies deutliche Auswirkungen auf die prognostizierte Entwicklung des Geschäftsvolumens und des Ergebnisses. In welcher Höhe die Einschränkungen auf Seiten der Fachhandelspartner aber auch Lieferengpässe auf Seiten der Industrie oder flächendeckender Personalausfall zu Geschäftsvolumens- und Ertragseinbußen führen, ist derzeit nicht genau zu beziffern. 

Quelle und Vorschaufoto: NORDWEST Handel AG