Technology supplier and steelmaker Danieli expects the steel market to gradually recover in 2021, after a consolidation during the second half of 2020.
The Italian-headquartered company published its financial results for the year ended June 2020, confirming that while its steelmaking arm suffered a drop in revenue, its plant-making business was more resilient.
The plantmaking unit saw a 5% year-on-year increase in revenue in the fiscal year to €2.1 billion ($2.5 billion). Steelmaking turnover fell almost -40% to €660m. As a result, the plantmaking business increased net profitability by 91% y-o-y, while steelmaking marked a net loss of €10m. It is worth noting, though, that the supply of technology is usually impacted by crises with more of a delay compared to steelmaking.
Danieli is confident its technology supply unit will continue to benefit from the need of steelmakers to tackle CO2 emissions and improve the efficiency of their plants.
“The antidumping policies that have now been implemented by all the major steelmaking countries have sparked demand for new plants that also have to ensure low emissions for sustainable production in line with the tendency to reduce CO2 that today is required of each sector of industry and that will lead to many investments in innovative plants as soon as 2020 and in the years to follow,” Danieli says in a report seen by Kallanish.
For its steelmaking unit, the company notes the ABS Group sold around 1 million tonnes of products during the 2019-2020 year, a slight decrease over the year before. The goal for next year is to “…increase these volumes and bring ABS Sisak in Croatia back to full production capacity”, the company concludes.
