European steel wire rod processor Van Merksteijn to buy rest of Intersig

European wire rod processor Van Merksteijn has filed a request to the Belgian and German competition authorities to complete its purchase of the remaining half of Belgium-based reroller Intersig, group commercial director Kris van Ginderdeuren confirmed to S&P Global Platts Tuesday.

In 2004, Van Merksteijn acquired 50% of Intersig’s shares, while the other 50% were held by Roeland Van Maercke, whose core business is in the real estate sector.

The Intersig acquisition is being driven to create economies of scale and synergies, van Ginderdeuren said, while declining to comment on the price of the acquisition.

Intersig is a reroller that can produce around 200,000 mt/year of long products, with rebar in coils its main business.

The Van Merksteijn group, which produces reinforcing steel products, has a design capacity of 2.5 million mt/year of long steel products.

The Van Merksteijn group is one of the largest independent European rerollers, and has been very vocal on the EU imposition of import safeguard quotas on wire rod and rebar. The annual Turkish-origin non-alloy wire rod quota, which runs from July 2019 to June 2020, has only 4,461 mt remaining as of February 3, while the Russian-origin quota for the same product still has 125,467 mt remaining, and the Belarussian-origin quota has 85,426 mt remaining.

— Annalisa Villa, Viral Shah