EU steel industry representatives bemoaned slow bureaucracy in the bloc delaying critical industrial projects during the Handelsblatt “Zukunft Stahl” conference in Essen this week.
SSAB chief executive Johnny Sjöström, who previously worked in the USA as well as in China, remarked that in those countries, it takes only six months to lay a new power line, “whereas in Öxelesund we needed nine years to get it approved”. This involved decisions, reversals and appellations at various instances in the political approval process. “This is a bureaucracy we need to overcome,” Kallanish heard him demand at the event.
Former Salzgitter ceo Hansjörg Fuhrmann, who participated at the conference as an attendee, pointed at the “very different timeline they have in India”, compared with “man-made regulations” slowing down decisions in Europe.
This was confirmed by voestalpine Steel Division head Hubert Zajicek, who told of impressions he has gained of different countries from his experience as worldsteel executive committee member. “It is nonsense to believe that we Europeans can detach our economic ecosystem [with its numerous regulations] from the rest of the world,” he said.
To a lesser extent, Europe also lags behind on pace of business processes such as consolidation, said Guido Kerkhoff, ceo of Klöckner & Co, which has expanded vastly in the USA. Stateside, the process for making acquisitions and expansions entails one third to one half the effort required in Europe. “After all, you are considered the good guy when you come investing,” he stated.
Sjöström also pointed out a particularly uneasy case in which speed can be crucial. European armed forces standardising and approving the construction of tanks is a lengthy process, meaning Europe’s total production of tanks does not exceed 50 units per year – versus 500 made in Russia in the same time.
