Category: Latest Updates

German steel distribution group Sülzle Stahlpartner in May is now offering rebar bending services at its branch in Ehrenfriedersdorf near Chemnitz in Thuringia.

The start-up of the bending shop is actually a re-start, after bending services were halted and the equipment sold in 2012, Kallanish learns from a local manager. The 60-year old distribution company was still part of the Remax group at that time, but was taken over by Sülzle early last year. Apart from selling end bending rebar, Ehrenfriedersdorf also offers beams and sections for construction. It employs a staff of 80 people.

For Sülzle group, headquartered in Rosenfeld, southwestern Germany, it is the 16th bending facility in its ever-growing chain of stockholding distributors, mainly for rebar.

ArcelorMittal plans to expand steel production cuts in Europe to its plants in Dunkirk, France and Eisenhuttenstadt, Germany, over the fourth quarter, the steelmaker said Wednesday.

The latest reduction comes after ArcelorMittal said it will cut 80,000 mt of steel coil production at its Asturias plant in Spain in July.

In early May, the company announced a reduction of primary steel production in Asturias, citing “an unprecedented rise in imports from outside the EU” amid high energy prices.

The cuts followed an early-May announcement by the company to cut 3 million mt of steel production in 2019 when it revealed a temporary stoppage at Kraków, Poland and reduced production in Asturias. Details about the latest cuts were not disclosed by the company.

Wednesday’s announcement also revealed that ArcelorMittal will “reduce primary steelmaking production at its facility in Bremen, Germany in the fourth quarter of this year, where a planned blast furnace stoppage for repair works will be extended.”

Also, it will extend a planned shutdown in Q4 2019 to repair a blast furnace at its Asturias plant.

“This is again a hard decision for us to have taken, but given the level of weakness in the market, we feel it is the prudent course of action. This will be a temporary measure that will be reversed when market conditions improve,” said Geert van Poelvoorde, CEO of flat products at ArcelorMittal Europe.

— Clement Choo

thyssenkrupp continues to be a organisation in a decided state of change The ceo of its Steel division, Andreas Goss, now appears to be on his way out of the company.

German media had picked up the news, originally spread by Essen-based daily WAZ, on Tuesday evening, citing insiders as saying that Goss and the company will be parting ways.  This has now been confirmed to Kallanish by parent company thyssenkrupp AG.

This latest turn of events comes as an encore to the recent cancellation of the merger of tk Steel with TataSteel Europe, a joint venture which Goss had been designated to lead. tk AG’s wording suggests that this time the break is being instigated by the company itself, and makes a link to the merger failure. “Given that the joint venture with Tata Steel cannot come about, our ambition now is to set up thyssenkruppSteel Europe as fit for the future. In this context. talks are under way with Mr Goss about the termination of his contract.”

Analysts contacted by Kallanish expressed their surprise about the company’s statement, given that “… the failure of the merger was not Goss’s fault – at least not in a way that’s visible,” one says. Another one admits that he was “… totally bewildered” by the news. “thyssenkrupp has enough open construction sites, so why open another one,” he says.

Goss, who had been the UK general manager of Siemens AG before he came to tk Steel five years ago, has a reputation as a tough but effective manager. One analyst draws the comparison with the ceo of tk Elevators, arguably the group’s moist successful unit. “Goss and (Andreas) Schierenbeck were the tk managers that have done a good job in recent years,” he says.

The Port of Antwerp has announced the opening of a covered warehouse with two railway tracks that will mainly handle steel products, Kallanish notes.

The Antwerp Railhouse is located at the Churchill dock, and is an investment by Zuidnatie, Conti7 and Edmond Van Dyck & Sons. It is to reinforce Antwerp’s position as a breakbulk port and help to increase the share of rail transport in the modal split, the port authority says.

With a volume of 8 million tonnes/year, steel accounts for a significant portion of breakbulk in the port of Antwerp. Since certain steel products cannot tolerate moisture, the covered warehouse is a significant advantage, the authority says. In addition, Antwerp Railhouse will also handle wood, paper and other weather-sensitive products.

With an area of 30,000 square metres, the new facility is equipped with a 40-tonne gantry crane. Trains can drive directly inside to be loaded and unloaded in a conditioned environment. The Port of Antwerp aims to double the volume of freight carried by rail between now and 2030, it notes.

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French carmaker Renault confirms to Kallanish it has received a proposal from Italian carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) regarding a potential merger transaction.

FCA has delivered a non-binding letter to the Board of Groupe Renault proposing a combination of their respective businesses as a 50/50 merger. The FCA proposal follows initial operational discussions between the two companies to identify products and geographies where they could collaborate.

The proposed combination would create a global automaker, preeminent in terms of revenue, volumes, profitability and technology, benefitting the companies’ respective shareholders and stakeholders, FCA says in a note.

The combination would create the third-largest global carmaker with 8.7 million of annual vehicle sales and a strong market presence in key regions and vehicle segments. No plant will be closed as a result of the combination, FCA reassures.

FCA estimates, based on its experience, that approximately 90% of synergies would come from purchasing savings, R&D efficiencies, and manufacturing and tooling efficiencies.

FCA operates 102 manufacturing facilities. Renault is an international multi-brand group, selling close to 3.9 million vehicles in 134 countries in 2018, with 36 manufacturing sites.

Large Italian service centre Gruppo Manni is targeting growth abroad in line with most Italian steel producers and distributors who are offsetting the weak domestic demand with export sales.

According to Manni’s 2018 financial statement seen byKallanish, the large long products buyer increased turnover by almost 9% year-on-year to over €630 million ($705.1m), of which 40% was achieved abroad. Manni’s target is to increase exports’ share in revenue to 50% by 2021, president Giuseppe Mani told the Italian press. Last year the company sold 310,000 tonnes of steel products. Ebitda stood at €20m, the report states.

“These good results should be examined taking into consideration the difficulties our sector has faced, which have now lasted for a decade,” Manni says in the report. “Such difficulties have unexpectedly worsened in recent months, due to a general economic downturn.”

Manni operates in Italy, Spain, Romania, Germany, Russia and Mexico. It comprises 14 companies operating in three different business units, producing, processing and marketing high-tech steel products and advanced design services.

Manni Sipre is a European leader in semi-finished steel products, components and structural systems for the construction sector. The group has a subsidiary Manni Inox and Manni Green Tech that produces lightweight structures. Manni Store serves the north-western Italian market as a distributor of the group’s products. Isopan focuses on the production of insulating metal panels for walls and roofs targeting key international markets.

thyssenkrupp Materials Nederland has installed and put into operation a fully automatic cassette system at its Veghel branch in Holland, Kallanish learns from the company.

With the system, the storage space and the number of pickings per hour can be increased considerably, the company says. In the vertically installed system, a robot picks up the cassettes containing steel products completely automatically from the shelves and transports them to the despatch point.  Together with cordless scanners, the facility can now work up to 40 % faster. with a total of 43 pickings per hour.

With the new cassette system, thyssenkrupp is responding to current market developments. The planning of projects in construction and industry is becoming ever more complex. So-called ‘lean construction’ is more frequent and throughput times are shorter. As a result, the number of orders for small quantities in recent years has increased.

The system comprises a total of 2,650 cassettes. For each product there is a storage capacity of 3.5 tonnes. Due to this very large storage capacity, the warehouse has also expanded its product range to include various high-quality products such as hot-rolled welded tubes and round tubes, tk Materials notes.

The European Union (EU) steelmaker’s association Eurofer wants to meet urgently with “… EU policy makers” to discuss what it calls a “… crisis” in European steelmaking.

“There has been a sudden and markedly negative shift in the prospects of the European steel industry in recent months – and the terrible consequences are plain to see,” says Eurofer director general Axel Eggert in a statement sent to Kallanish.

He refers to a number of actual or potential steel plant closures in Europe over the past few weeks. These are due principally to global overcapacity as the underlying reason Eggert says, but also to an upsurge in deflected imports into Europe since the imposition of US Section 232 measures in 2018. Eurofer expects that steel demand in Europe will also decline by -0.4% in 2019.

“The bill of direct jobs immediately at risk exceeds 10,000. Given the EU steel industry’s multiplier effect, the loss of indirect employment in the supply chain could top 100,000,” Eggert adds.

The EU safeguard measures have not worked as intended, the director general continues. “To become effective, it needs to be revised, urgently, so that the market is not further distorted. Eurofer is seeking urgent consultations with the EU institutions and member state policy makers to remove the specific weaknesses in the current safeguard,” he says.

The biggest-volume European steelmaker ArcelorMittal has already been suspending or slowing output at several of its European facilities. The news last week that British Steel had also slumped into administration, immediately accounts for over 4000 direct jobs at risk with 20,000 downstream positions also liable to be heavily affected.